The State has been or­dered to pay $75,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a woman who was charged with pos­ses­sion of a small quan­ti­ty of white pow­der sus­pect­ed to be co­caine, but which even­tu­al­ly turned out to be crushed painkiller tablets. 

High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams or­dered com­pen­sa­tion for Deb­bie Singh af­ter up­hold­ing her wrong­ful ar­rest, un­law­ful de­ten­tion, and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case against the State. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Singh was ar­rest­ed as po­lice of­fi­cers raid­ed a night­club in St James, on No­vem­ber 18, 2017. 

While search­ing Singh, a fe­male po­lice of­fi­cer re­port­ed­ly found a pow­dery white sub­stance in a small zi­plock bag. 

Al­though Singh told the of­fi­cer that it was the rem­nants of some Mi­dol tablets, she was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to two po­lice sta­tions be­fore be­ing charged with pos­ses­sion of 0.2 grammes of co­caine. 

Singh was grant­ed bail and made four ap­pear­ances in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court be­fore the charge was dis­missed based on lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing per­formed by of­fi­cials of the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James. 

In her law­suit, Singh claimed that John act­ed with mal­ice as she was al­leged­ly ag­gres­sive to­wards her be­fore and af­ter the search. 

While tes­ti­fy­ing in the case, the of­fi­cer ad­mit­ted that she made no checks or in­quiries to de­ter­mine whether Singh was telling the truth about the sub­stance be­fore charg­ing her. 

She al­so ad­mit­ted that be­fore search­ing Singh, she had no in­for­ma­tion that the woman was in pos­ses­sion of il­le­gal drugs.

As part of her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams or­dered the State to pay Singh $19,500 in le­gal costs. 

Singh was rep­re­sent­ed by Tara­dath Singh, while Shali­ni Singh and Vin­cent Jar­dine rep­re­sent­ed the State.