Ak­ile Si­mon

Three of­fi­cers as­signed to the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, and a fourth to Project 250, al­so known as the Bi­cy­cle Unit, have ap­peared be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate, charged with steal­ing mon­ey from a rob­ber and beat­ing a pris­on­er yes­ter­day. The of­fi­cers all to­geth­er have close to 75 years' ser­vice. The charges re­port­ed­ly stemmed from a rob­bery at Club Av­enue 5, Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, on Au­gust 21, when po­lice re­spond­ed to a re­port about an armed rob­bery in progress. The of­fi­cers are Cpl De­op­er­sad Jankien­anan, 51, of Khanai Road, North Bar­rack­pore; Cpl Kis­han Har­rysingh, 44; PC Anslem Drakes, 38, of Bo­nan­za Street, Princes Town; and PC Rea­gan Ra­manan, 27, of Buen In­ten­to Road, Princes Town.

The law­men stood be­fore 4A Court mag­is­trate Gail Gon­za­les when the in­dictable charges were read to them. Ac­cord­ing to the charges, it is al­leged that the of­fi­cers mis­be­haved by fail­ing with­out rea­son­able cause or law­ful ex­cuse to hand over to the in­ves­ti­ga­tor of a rob­bery at Club Av­enue sit­u­at­ed at Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, an un­de­ter­mined sum of mon­ey which was part of the mon­ey tak­en and re­cov­ered. It is al­so al­leged that two of the of­fi­cers un­law­ful­ly beat pris­on­er Mark Austin while in po­lice cus­tody. Har­rysingh, Drakes and Jankien­anan were al­so slapped with charges of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice by steal­ing an un­de­ter­mined sum of cash from the casi­no. Jankien­anan al­so faces an ad­di­tion­al charge of beat­ing Austin. Ra­manan al­so faces a charge of beat­ing Austin while in po­lice cus­tody.

Har­rysingh and Jankien­anan were rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Chat­er­am Sinanan, while Kevin Rati­ram ap­peared on be­half of Ra­manan. Drakes was un­rep­re­sent­ed. The lawyers have re­quest­ed full dis­clo­sure, in­clud­ing a video sur­veil­lance tape which record­ed ac­tiv­i­ties at the casi­no. Mag­is­trate Gon­za­les re­mand­ed the of­fi­cers on $150,OOO bail each which was fixed for them by Jus­tice of the Peace Ack­bar Khan last Fri­day. She or­dered them to sur­ren­der their pass­ports. The charges were laid by Sgt Kirk Thomas of the An­ti Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau. The mat­ter was ad­journed to next Tues­day and trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates' Court.