A "Grade A" uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent, charged with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion, yes­ter­day told a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate he was ex­per­i­ment­ing with the il­le­gal drug. Bran­don Dood­nath, 18, of Ajo­da Street, El So­cor­ro, plead­ed guilty when he ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Melvin Daniel in the Fourth (B) Court. He was grant­ed $80,000 in bail and re­leased in­to his par­ents' cus­tody. Dood­nath, a busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion and crim­i­nal jus­tice stu­dent at the Col­lege of Sci­ence. Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T (COSTAATT), was ar­rest­ed at Sun­day's Phag­wa cel­e­bra­tions at the Aranguez Sa­van­nah, Aranguez.

Dur­ing his court ap­pear­ance yes­ter­day, Dood­nath said he was with some friends when they de­cid­ed to buy the mar­i­jua­na and try it for the first time.

In re­sponse, po­lice pros­e­cu­tor, Sgt Joseph, not­ed Dood­nath was ar­rest­ed in the midst of a re­li­gious fes­ti­val. He had sev­en grammes of mar­i­jua­na which was wrapped in alu­minum foil when he was ar­rest­ed. In his mit­i­ga­tion plea, he claimed to have as­pi­ra­tion of be­com­ing an at­tor­ney-at-law and said, if con­vict­ed, a crim­i­nal record would ham­per his am­bi­tions. Dood­nath, who had no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions or pend­ing mat­ters, said he held a part-time job while at­tend­ing uni­ver­si­ty. Through his lawyer, he asked the court to be rep­ri­mand­ed and dis­charged un­der Sec­tion 71A of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act. Un­der the act, if rep­ri­mand­ed and dis­charged, Dood­nath would not have a crim­i­nal con­vic­tion record­ed against him.