Derek Achong

Eight dri­vers who were ar­rest­ed af­ter beach limes in To­co on Sun­day were yes­ter­day fined at to­tal of $40,000 for drunk­en dri­ving. The mo­torists were ar­rest­ed be­tween 3 pm and 7 pm dur­ing a po­lice ex­er­cise along the Va­len­cia Old Road. They were all re­turn­ing from limes at beach­es along the north-east coast and at the Va­len­cia Riv­er.

Dur­ing their court ap­pear­ances be­fore Mag­is­trate Aden Stroude in the San­gre Grande Third Court, the dri­vers all plead­ed guilty to the of­fence which car­ries a max­i­mum fine of $8,000 for a first-time of­fend­er. The dri­vers were Nicholas Gar­cia, Ramnaresh Amools­ingh, Ran­dal Phillip, Ra­jesh Singh, Desmond Bachan, Shi­raz Ho­sein, De­o­dath See­lal and Bill Thomas.

All eight men record­ed breathal­yser read­ings that were over the 35 mi­cro­grammes for every 100 mil­li­l­itres of breath, with the high­est be­ing al­most four times the le­gal lim­it. Af­ter plead­ing guilty, the dri­vers were is­sued fines by Stroude which ranged from $4,000 to $7,000. In de­fault of pay­ing the fines, the dri­vers would face three months in prison with hard labour. The ex­er­cise was co-or­di­nat­ed by ASP Neville Sankar and in­clud­ed PCs Jody Ramkhelawan and Kevin Singh, all of the San­gre Grande CID.