Derek Achong

A judge has or­dered that a fish­er­man from cen­tral Trinidad, who was caught off the coast of Ch­aguara­mas with 50 ki­los of mar­i­jua­na in 2014, be re­leased from prison.

High Court Judge Nali­ni Singh re­cent­ly or­dered Byjoo Har­ri­nar­ine’s re­lease af­ter rul­ing that he had al­ready served his six-year sen­tence for mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing whilst on re­mand await­ing tri­al.

Har­ri­nar­ine, of San­ford Street, Cou­va, agreed to plead guilty to the charge af­ter he re­quest­ed a max­i­mum sen­tence in­di­ca­tion (MSI) from Jus­tice Singh, who ad­vised him on the po­ten­tial sen­tence he would face if he ad­mit­ted com­mit­ting the crime.

Har­ri­nar­ine was ar­rest­ed on May 18, 2014.

Ac­cord­ing to the de­tails of the case, T&T Coast Guard of­fi­cers, who were on pa­trol off the coast of Ch­aguara­mas, re­spond­ed to a re­port of a sus­pi­cious ves­sel in the First Bo­cas near Cha­cachacare Is­land.

The of­fi­cers at­tempt­ed to stop the pirogue, reg­is­tered as “Yazz­ie 2,” but were forced to en­gage in a high-speed mar­itime chase af­ter their re­quest was ig­nored.

The ves­sel was even­tu­al­ly in­ter­cept­ed af­ter the of­fi­cers fired sev­er­al warn­ing shots in its di­rec­tion.

Har­ri­nar­ine was re­port­ed­ly seen dump­ing a cro­cus bag con­tain­ing mar­i­jua­na in­to the wa­ter.

Har­ri­nar­ine and an­oth­er man were ar­rest­ed and the two re­main­ing bags in the boat were seized. They were tak­en to the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay base and hand­ed over to po­lice of­fi­cers, who charged them with the crime.

The drugs, which weighed a to­tal of 50.25 ki­los, were tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James for test­ing.

The men were pros­e­cut­ed sep­a­rate­ly.

Har­ri­nar­ine was rep­re­sent­ed by Adelia Jor­dan, of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment, while Char­maine Samuel rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.