British Transport Police spent £200,000 investigating their own officers for "stealing" five bottles of Vimto which they had found.
Transport officers Rob Mitchell, 40, and Kris Catterall, 38, found the soft drink cordial in a cardboard box beside a railway line, The Sun reported.
Police rules say they should have booked it in as lost or stolen property but they decided to share it with colleagues instead.
When it was spotted in a mess room cupboard the constables were suspended on full pay for 18 months.
The case was later dropped but they were then fined four days' wages, £400 each, for a minor breach of police rules.
Insiders told The Sun that the case, in Stockport, Manchester, had cost taxpayers £200,000 in wages and legal fees.
A source told the newspaper: "These guys and their families were put through hell for something trivial."
Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: "This is an absurd and shocking waste of taxpayers' money and utter incompetence on behalf of the senior officers involved.
"If disciplinary action needed to be taken it should have been done quickly and without wasting money. The police chiefs who oversaw this episode should be held accountable to taxpayers."
Alex Robertson, chairman of the British Transport Police Federation which represented both men, told The Sun: "To be suspended for so long over something so trivial will have put the officers and their families under great stress."
