Of­fi­cers of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force on ex­er­cise du­ty in the Navet For­est on Thurs­day burnt $ 61 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na trees and de­stroyed four camps. Un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Sgt Awong-Cole and Cpl Vial­va, of­fi­cers of the Or­gan­ised Crime Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau trekked more than five miles in­to the for­est, where they dis­cov­ered 61,000 ful­ly grown trees, and re­cov­ered 150 ki­los of cured mar­i­jua­na and 20,000 seedlings.

Al­though the camps were found to con­tain food, cloth­ing and oth­er sup­plies, no one was ar­rest­ed dur­ing the ex­er­cise, which took place be­tween 9 am and 3 pm Al­so a to­tal of 44 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and 77 war­rants ex­e­cut­ed dur­ing an ex­er­cise be­tween 10 pm on Thurs­day and 6 am yes­ter­day in the North­ern Di­vi­sion.

Of­fi­cers led by Snr Supt Abra­ham, ASP Ho­sein and Sgt Sinanan raid­ed sev­er­al homes in the Tu­na­puna, St Joseph and Mara­cas ar­eas. Of those ar­rest­ed, 31 peo­ple were held on first-in­stance war­rants and 46 oth­ers were ar­rest­ed for var­i­ous of­fences.