A police success hailed as the country's biggest-ever methamphetamine seizure has turned into an embarrassment as a court slammed the officers involved for making false reports and stealing the drugs before acquitting the accused, a news report said today.

The Kuantan High Court said the trial of lorry driver Lee Yong Toe, 48, charged with trafficking 753 kilograms of methamphetamine last year, has been marred by controversy, The Star newspaper reported.

The court heard that several policemen, some of whom were witnesses in the trial, had lied and stolen some 40 kilograms of the drugs.

One of the officers admitted to the theft while another, a chief inspector, admitted he was not the one who found the lorry, as was stated in his report.

The judge was irked that despite such serious offences, the nine policemen involved were let off with just their promotions and increments frozen.

"For a similar offence, any other person would have faced criminal charges and been sentenced to a definite jail term as theft of drugs and lodging a false police report are clearly more serious than stealing milk from a supermarket, for which those guilty have been sent to prison," judge Akhtar Tahir said.

"The court cannot just sit back in the face of such gross inaction towards the wrongdoers and therefore directs that the policemen involved be dealt with severely and under the country's criminal law," he said in his ruling before acquitting Lee.

If convicted, Lee would have faced the mandatory death sentence. His freedom, however, was short-lived as the police rearrested him on another drug charge.

When Lee and two accomplices were caught in May 2009 with drugs worth 270 million ringgit (about 87.5 million dollars) hidden in his lorry, police touted it as the biggest methamphetamine seizure ever.

Narcotics Crimes Investigations Department acting director Othman Harun told The Star that the federal police had taken over the investigation into the rogue policemen from the Pahang state police.

- dpa