A po­lice con­sta­ble and a civil­ian have been re­mand­ed in cus­tody af­ter ap­pear­ing in court charged with the mur­der of live­stock farmer Vish­nu Lal­la.

PC Ja­son Bee­tam, 28, of Tem­ple Street, Beau­car­ro Road, Freeport, and Govin­dra Lack­ram, 26, of Bas­ta Hall Vil­lage, Cou­va, made their first court ap­pear­ance be­fore High Court Mas­ter Whit­ney Franklin, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The duo was charged with mur­der­ing 63-year-old Lal­la, of Wind­sor Park, Cou­va, ear­li­er this month.

Lal­la was ab­duct­ed while tend­ing to his an­i­mals near his home on No­vem­ber 8.

His ve­hi­cle was seen speed­ing away from the area, and lat­er that day, a rel­a­tive re­ceived a $100,000 ran­som de­mand for his re­lease.

The burnt shell of Lal­la’s ve­hi­cle was found in Es­per­an­za.

Lal­la’s body was found in a forest­ed area off Brechin Cas­tle Road in Cou­va around 9.30 pm the same day he was kid­napped.

A post-mortem re­vealed that he died of a gun­shot wound.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Mas­ter Franklin set dead­lines for State pros­e­cu­tors to file ev­i­dence against the duo.

She al­so ad­vised the men that they could raise an al­i­bi with­in 28 days or at their even­tu­al suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing on Oc­to­ber 2, next year. They were al­so ad­vised of their right to ap­ply to a judge for bail pend­ing their even­tu­al tri­al.

Bee­tam, who has been a po­lice of­fi­cer for six years and was last as­signed to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion, was al­so charged with pos­ses­sion of 19 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

Mas­ter Franklin de­ferred read­ing the charge as Bee­tam’s lawyer, Keron Ramkhal­whan, of Ju­ris X Cham­bers, re­port­ed­ly sub­mit­ted that he planned to file a ju­di­cial re­view and con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion law­suit over it.

Mas­ter Franklin still grant­ed Bee­tam $170,000 bail on that charge.

At­tor­ney An­dre Kooma­ls­ingh rep­re­sent­ed Lack­ram.

A sta­tus hear­ing in the case is sched­uled to take place on Ju­ly 29 next year. —Derek Achong