Three po­lice of­fi­cers ac­cused of as­sault­ing and ex­tort­ing a Ch­agua­nas busi­ness­man, last week, have been grant­ed a to­tal of $550,000 bail.

Sgt Ram­goolan De­osaran, 44, of Rochard Dou­glas Road, Bar­rack­pore; PC An­ton Sam­son, 38, of Palmiste, Long­denville; and PC In­shan Khan, 32, of Brick­field, Wa­ter­loo, were grant­ed bail af­ter they ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Maris­sa Gomez in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court on Tues­day in re­la­tion to crim­i­nal charges aris­ing out of the in­ci­dent.

The three of­fi­cers, who were last as­signed to the Ch­agua­nas Rob­bery Squad, were charged with mis­be­hav­ing in pub­lic of­fice by as­sault­ing and false­ly im­pris­on­ing Koon Orie Nar­ine, of Cara­pichaima.

De­osaran was slapped with two ad­di­tion­al charges for mis­be­hav­ing in pub­lic of­fice by de­mand­ing $50,000 from Nar­ine with mal­ice, and for threat­en­ing Nar­ine to not make a re­port against him and his col­leagues.

The trio stood silent­ly in the pris­on­er’s en­clo­sure.

Their lawyer Tara­dath Singh asked Gomez to grant them rea­son­able bail as they are po­lice of­fi­cers with no pri­or crim­i­nal records.

While po­lice pros­e­cu­tor In­sp Ra­jesh Lall did not ob­ject to bail, he stat­ed that con­di­tions should be at­tached based on the se­ri­ous na­ture of the charges.

Sam­son and Khan, who have nine and ten years’ ser­vice, re­spec­tive­ly, were grant­ed $150,000 bail each, while De­osaran, who has been a po­lice of­fi­cer for over 20 years, was grant­ed $250,000 bail.

The of­fi­cers’ rel­a­tives, who were in court for the hear­ing, were al­lowed to co-sign for their bail.

As part of the con­di­tions of their bail, Gomez or­dered the of­fi­cers to re­port to their near­est po­lice sta­tion once week­ly, to sur­ren­der their pass­ports and to re­frain from con­tact­ing Nar­ine for the du­ra­tion of the case.

She al­so stat­ed that they had to in­form the court if they planned to move from their cur­rent ad­dress­es.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, de­tec­tives of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) be­gan in­ves­ti­gat­ing the of­fi­cers af­ter Nar­ine made a re­port to them, last Fri­day.

Nar­ine re­port­ed­ly made arrange­ments to pur­chase a car last Thurs­day but was con­front­ed by three men when he ar­rived at the lo­ca­tion. The men re­port­ed­ly held Nar­ine hostage and de­mand­ed $50,000 for his re­lease.

Nar­ine was al­leged­ly able to con­tact rel­a­tives, who paid $35,000 be­fore he was even­tu­al­ly re­leased.

A press re­lease on the trio’s court ap­pear­ance, from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), stat­ed that dur­ing the course of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, po­lice found three il­le­gal firearms, an air ri­fle, 70 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, 28 pack­ets of mar­i­jua­na, a quan­ti­ty of co­caine and an undis­closed quan­ti­ty of cash hid­den in the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion. How­ev­er, the three of­fi­cers were not charged for the il­le­gal items.

The re­lease stat­ed that in­ves­ti­ga­tions were on­go­ing in­to that dis­cov­ery.

The trio is ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in the Ch­agua­nas Mag­is­trates’ Court on Ju­ly 9.