Two men were de­nied bail when they ap­peared in court this week charged joint­ly with pos­ses­sion of cannabis for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing.

Mi­tra Balchan, 42, of La Brea, and Cae­sar Ger­al­do Ro­driguez Calzadil­la, 33, of San Juan, were charged with the of­fence when they ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Am­brose Per­sads­ingh in the South Crim­i­nal Court on Mon­day 6th Oc­to­ber, 2025. They were de­nied bail and the mat­ter was ad­journed to April 10th, 2026.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Coast Guard per­son­nel were on pa­trol in the Gulf of Paria off Point Fortin around 2:18 am on Fri­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, 2025, when they in­ter­cept­ed a ves­sel. Three men al­leged­ly jumped over­board. Two of the men were re­cov­ered. A to­tal of 268 pack­ages con­tain­ing cannabis weigh­ing 292.68 kilo­grammes were al­leged­ly found on the boat.

The men were charged fol­low­ing ad­vice from Act­ing Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal.

In a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent, a 40-year-old Ca­roni man was ar­rest­ed for Pos­ses­sion of Cannabis for the Pur­pose of Traf­fick­ing af­ter Task Force of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise be­tween 3:30 pm and 8 pm on Tues­day 7th Oc­to­ber, 2025.

Sev­er­al search­es were con­duct­ed in the En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, Fe­lic­i­ty, Char­lieville, Cunu­pia and Ca­roni dis­tricts. The sus­pect was held with 1.2 kilo­grammes of cannabis in his pos­ses­sion.