Two 15-year-old female students were arrested on Monday for trying to smuggle drugs to their detained relatives in Phnom Penh’s Police Judiciaire (PJ) prison by hiding the drugs in food.

Dangkor district police chief Chim Sitha said on Tuesday that the girls were Cambodian students. Specialists were questioning them at the district police station and building a case file to be referred to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday.

“PJ officials held the two suspects and handed them over to my office. We are questioning them and plan to send the suspects to the court on Wednesday,” Sitha said.

Prey Veng commune administrative police chief Mak Kunthear said on Tuesday that the two students had been sent to the district police station on Monday night after receiving the case from PJ prison officials.

The girls were arrested for taking in nine packets of crystal meth placed in eggplants for the prisoners.

The Interior Ministry’s General Department of Prisons spokesman Nuth Savana said specialists were building the case file to be referred to the court.

“We have handed over the case to the local police which will handle it according to the law,” he said.

In a Facebook post, the National Police on Tuesday said PJ prison officials had held the two students and handed them over to the Prey Veng commune administrative police.

The post said commune police forces received the news from PJ officials. The two female suspects are residents of Chbar Ampov district’s Chbar Ampov commune in Phnom Penh.

When they entered the prison, officials checked them and discovered the contraband, it said.