RALPH BAN­WARIE

Ma­yaro Po­lice made the biggest haul in a mar­i­jua­na erad­i­ca­tion ex­er­cise con­duct­ed in the dis­trict yes­ter­day, find­ing mil­lions of TT-dol­lars’ worth of the drug in cured, seedling and tree form.

Po­lice re­port­ed hav­ing found a to­tal of 300 pounds equiv­a­lent to 136.078 kilo­grams of mar­i­jua­na, which car­ries a street val­ue of over TT$2.5 mil­lion; ten thou­sand ful­ly grown mar­i­jua­na trees and 5,000 seedlings, val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$17.6 mil­lion.

The dis­cov­ery was made at two makeshift camps off Cedar Grove Road, Ma­yaro

Two per­sons were ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the find—a 21 -year-old of St Ann’s Road, Ma­yaro; and the oth­er, a 22-year-old of Grand La­goon, Ma­yaro.

They are both charged with the pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing by PC Nar­ine, and are to be tak­en be­fore a Ma­yaro mag­is­trate.

A war­rant had been ob­tained for the ar­rest of a 35-year-old man of Pier­re­ville, Ma­yaro.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Aguilal, East­ern Di­vi­sion said it was a mar­i­jua­na field day, as it was the largest amount of cured mar­i­jua­na and trees de­stroyed in any one day.

The an­ti-crime op­er­a­tion was con­duct­ed in the Ma­yaro dis­trict on Tues­day.  Of­fi­cers went to Gre­go­rio Trace, Cedar Grove in Ma­yaro to an agri­cul­tur­al plot, lo­cat­ed some 100 feet from the main road, when they saw a make shift camp and a man tend­ing to his mar­i­jua­na plants. The po­lice at­tempt­ed to ar­rest him; how­ev­er, he ran through the bush­es and made good his es­cape.

Po­lice car­ried out search in the camp and found 52 pounds of mar­i­jua­na and while mak­ing checks to see if they could find the run­away sus­pect, they came up­on a mar­i­jua­na plan­ta­tion field with about 10,000 ful­ly grown mar­i­jua­na trees.

The po­lice con­tin­ued their search on­ly to dis­cov­er an­oth­er makeshift camp, where they found an­oth­er 250 pounds of mar­i­jua­na and 5,000 seedlings.

Both camps, mar­i­jua­na trees, and seedlings were placed de­stroyed by fire.

The ex­er­cise was co­or­di­nat­ed by Snr .Supt Aguilal, su­per­vised by ASP Jankie, and Sgt Ram­lakhan Ag Sgt Bhim, and in­clud­ed Ag Cpls Neaves, Dwari­ka PC Nar­ine , of­fi­cers from CID Task Force and Charg­e­room, all of Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion.