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...Dav Tep and Chea Vanda were arrested and defrocked on August 1 after police searched their lodgings in a Por Sen Chey district pagoda and claimed to discover women’s underwear, weapons, condoms and drugs.

At the time, district governor Hem Darith said the search had been triggered by allegations that Tep and Vanda had made death threats against a student then staying at the pagoda.

However, the student, who requested anonymity, told the Post a day after the arrests that authorities had forced him to sign his complaint against the monks and that he had asked to withdraw it when he saw the pair defrocked.
... “Everything is based on the police report. The court did not do further investigation. So, it could be an invented report from the police. I think the intention is to discourage monks from getting involved in social work,” said Chuon. “It is just to break the spirit of Khmer Kampuchea Krom.”

Items listed in the police report include a sword, a knife, a wooden stick, three mobile phones, a lottery ticket, women’s underwear, condoms and a substance police believed to be narcotics.

Two defrocked monks were handed prison sentences at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday, with one of them found guilty of drug possession and making a death threat and the other of using fake documents and improperly wearing monks’ robes...

The monks have staunchly proclaimed their innocence and insisted at the time of their arrest that they were framed in retaliation for their political activism on behalf of the opposition CNRP, including participating in protests along the Vietnamese border over alleged encroachment by Cambodia’s eastern neighbor.