A 31-year-old man from Freeport has been grant­ed $200,000 bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court for an armed rob­bery of a PH taxi dri­ver. 

Raf­fick Ali was placed on bail when he ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Mag­is­trate Adri­an Dar­manie, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

Ac­cord­ing to the sum­ma­ry of the ev­i­dence in the case, the rob­bery is al­leged to have tak­en place last Fri­day in Ch­agua­nas. 

The dri­ver re­port­ed­ly told po­lice that he was so­lic­it­ing pas­sen­gers when he was ap­proached by a woman, who ex­pressed in­ter­est in hir­ing him to take her to Freeport. 

The woman claimed that she had to ask a friend for the mon­ey and walked away. The dri­ver was im­me­di­ate­ly ap­proached by two men, who robbed him of his $1,000 gold ring and $1,180 in cash, which he ac­cu­mu­lat­ed from ply­ing his car for hire for three days. 

Both men ran away but Ali was ar­rest­ed by po­lice short­ly af­ter. 

Pre­sent­ing a bail ap­pli­ca­tion on Ali's be­half, his lawyer Bhi­mal Ma­hara­jh not­ed that he had been fined in the past for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion but not for any vi­o­lent crimes. 

As part of his bail con­di­tions, Ali was or­dered to re­port to the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion once week­ly. Dar­manie al­so im­posed a cur­few be­tween 9 pm and 6 am every day for the du­ra­tion of the case. 

Ali is sched­uled to reap­pear in court on Feb­ru­ary 9.