Se­nior of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion are deny­ing re­ports that 187 kilo­grammes of cannabis and 187 traf­fick­ing pack­ets of cannabis, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $1.3 mil­lion, were stolen from a po­lice sta­tion.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that five of­fi­cers were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed af­ter the drugs were re­moved from the prop­er­ty room of the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion, tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, on­ly for emp­ty card­board box­es to be re­turned.

The re­port claimed that mem­bers of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter. How­ev­er, head of the di­vi­sion Snr Supt Bhag­wan­deen said that was just “mis­chief.”

He told Guardian Me­dia that the mat­ter was in­ves­ti­gat­ed when it first sur­faced over the week­end, and all the drugs were ac­count­ed for.

This claim comes af­ter PC Ste­fon Khan was charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. The charge fol­lowed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the tam­per­ing and theft of po­lice ex­hibits.

While he was grant­ed $350,000 bail, he re­mains in cus­tody as he was giv­en a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­gan af­ter a fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion on Feb­ru­ary 24. A Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tor col­lect­ed ex­hibits in­clud­ing a firearm, am­mu­ni­tion and two blocks of cannabis weigh­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.2 kilo­grammes. These were sealed and stored at the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, the in­ves­ti­ga­tor dis­cov­ered that the ev­i­dence bag seal had been bro­ken. The cannabis blocks had been re­placed with tam­pered pack­ages con­tain­ing wood and a ce­ram­ic tile.

CCTV footage al­leged­ly iden­ti­fied Khan re­mov­ing the ex­hibits and re­plac­ing them with al­tered pack­ages.

That in­ci­dent fol­lowed a sim­i­lar case last Oc­to­ber, when a con­sta­ble at­tached to the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion was charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice over the theft of mar­i­jua­na val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 mil­lion from the sta­tion.

The drugs were stored at the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion. On Sep­tem­ber 15, of­fi­cers con­duct­ing a rou­tine check dis­cov­ered they were miss­ing.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na had been re­moved and re­placed with neat­ly pack­aged bricks and sty­ro­foam.