Two men ap­peared be­fore a Ch­agua­nas Mag­is­trate to­day, charged with pos­ses­sion of co­caine for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing.

Javed Ho­sein, 40, of Gas­par­il­lo and Shaz­ard Han­nif, 30, of St He­le­na Vil­lage, were joint­ly charged with the of­fence when they ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Aden Stroude in the Ch­agua­nas 1st Mag­is­trates’ Court.

The ac­cused were not called up­on to plead as charges were laid in­dictably.

Bail was grant­ed in the sum of $5 mil­lion with sure­ty.

The men were ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers of the North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force (NDTF) dur­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise con­duct­ed in St He­le­na Dis­trict on Sat­ur­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary, 2019.

Ho­sein and Han­nif were joint­ly charged by Sgt Pitt of the NDTF on Wednes­day 27th Feb­ru­ary, 2019.

While on mo­bile pa­trol, of­fi­cers re­ceived in­for­ma­tion and in­ter­cept­ed two ve­hi­cles sus­pect­ed of trans­port­ing nar­cotics.

A white Mit­subishi Sportero and a black Nis­san B13 were stopped and searched dur­ing which of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered two suit­cas­es con­tain­ing a to­tal of 23 pack­ets of co­caine, weigh­ing 20 kilo­grammes and ar­rest­ed both men.

The drug has an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $8 mil­lion.

The mat­ter was post­poned to Wednes­day 27th March, 2019.