An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice con­sta­ble Nicholas Ram­nar­ine, who was charged with Mis­be­hav­iour in Pub­lic Of­fice af­ter a miss­ing firearm was found in a garbage bag out­side the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion last Wednes­day, has been grant­ed $200,000 bail with sure­ty.

Ram­nar­ine ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Kim­i­tria Gray in the San Fer­nan­do High Court yes­ter­day, where he was not called up­on to en­ter a plea.

As part of his bail con­di­tions, Ram­nar­ine was or­dered to re­side at his home in Plai­sance, Ma­yaro, un­til the mat­ter is de­ter­mined.

He was al­so in­struct­ed to sur­ren­der his pass­port to the reg­is­trar of the San Fer­nan­do High Court with­in two days of se­cur­ing bail and was pro­hib­it­ed from ob­tain­ing any trav­el doc­u­ments.

The com­plainant has been di­rect­ed to sub­mit the case file on or be­fore Sep­tem­ber 21. A sta­tus hear­ing has been sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 29.

Dur­ing a han­dover pro­ce­dure at the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion on Ju­ly 29, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered that one of the po­lice-is­sued pis­tols was miss­ing.

A com­pre­hen­sive search of the strong room lat­er un­cov­ered the firearm in an ev­i­dence bag that had pre­vi­ous­ly con­tained an­oth­er TTPS firearm.

The miss­ing weapon was fit­ted with a mag­a­zine and 15 rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion.

Af­ter it was de­ter­mined that the firearm and am­mu­ni­tion could not be ac­count­ed for, a re­port was made to In­sp Ma­habir, who ini­ti­at­ed en­quiries.

Ram­nar­ine was in­ter­viewed and pro­vid­ed cer­tain in­for­ma­tion, which led of­fi­cers to search the sta­tion com­pound.

The miss­ing firearm and am­mu­ni­tion were sub­se­quent­ly found in­side a black plas­tic bag near a gate on the east­ern side of the sta­tion com­pound.

Fur­ther en­quiries were con­duct­ed and, based on his ut­ter­ances, Ram­nar­ine was de­tained.

Those state­ments were au­then­ti­cat­ed by a Jus­tice of the Peace. An in­ter­view was al­so con­duct­ed with Ram­nar­ine in the pres­ence of his at­tor­ney, and that state­ment was like­wise au­then­ti­cat­ed.

A file was com­piled and, fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tions with As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions An­ju Bho­la, Ram­nar­ine was charged with Mis­be­hav­iour in Pub­lic Of­fice.