$1M FOR PUNDIT SET UP BY COPS

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

The State has been or­dered to pay more than $1 mil­lion to a Rio Claro Hin­du pun­dit, his wife and their three chil­dren af­ter they suc­cess­ful­ly sued for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion, claim­ing po­lice fab­ri­cat­ed mar­i­jua­na charges against them.

In a re­cent rul­ing, Jus­tice Robin Mo­hammed found ev­i­dence of col­lu­sion among po­lice of­fi­cers and con­clud­ed they act­ed with­out rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause in ar­rest­ing and charg­ing the fam­i­ly.

The mat­ter stems from a po­lice raid on the fam­i­ly’s home on Sep­tem­ber 18, 2010, at 9.40 am. Po­lice claimed they act­ed on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived from an in­for­mant.

At the time, the pun­dit, his wife and one child were at home. The fam­i­ly main­tained their two oth­er chil­dren were adults and did not live at the res­i­dence.

Of­fi­cers Navin Ma­haraj and Shane Ramb­ha­jan were among those in­volved in the op­er­a­tion.

The fam­i­ly said no drugs were found in the house. They al­leged that af­ter their ar­rest, of­fi­cers stopped at a bar for 40-45 min­utes while they re­mained in­side a po­lice ve­hi­cle. Once at the po­lice sta­tion, they were placed in cells with no seat­ing or bed­ding and were forced to use a foul-smelling hole in the ground as a toi­let.

Lat­er that night, Ma­haraj charged the pun­dit with gath­er­ing mar­i­jua­na and charged him, his wife and one child with pos­ses­sion for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing.

The claimants al­leged Ma­haraj made false sta­tion di­ary en­tries stat­ing that he had seen the pun­dit gath­er­ing mar­i­jua­na, that a search war­rant had been ob­tained, that mar­i­jua­na was dis­cov­ered be­hind a kitchen cup­board and that the pun­dit and one child had made in­crim­i­nat­ing state­ments.

They al­so de­nied be­ing in­formed of their rights.

The fam­i­ly fur­ther claimed they en­dured harsh con­di­tions while in cus­tody. The pun­dit suf­fered from di­a­betes, while his wife had re­cent­ly un­der­gone surgery to re­move two cysts from her head and was wear­ing ban­dages. They al­leged they were de­nied med­ica­tion and re­ceived in­ad­e­quate meals. The wife lat­er be­came ill and was tak­en for med­ical treat­ment.

The cou­ple’s two oth­er chil­dren sub­se­quent­ly vis­it­ed the sta­tion with at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram.

How­ev­er, ar­rest war­rants were is­sued and they too were charged with pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na at their par­ents’ home de­spite in­sist­ing they did not re­side there.

The charges were dis­missed in 2017 af­ter a mag­is­trate up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion. The fam­i­ly then sued the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for com­pen­sa­tion.

They con­tend­ed they suf­fered trau­ma, hu­mil­i­a­tion, em­bar­rass­ment and ridicule and said the pun­dit’s re­li­gious prac­tice suf­fered as his num­ber of cer­e­monies de­clined sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

The State de­nied act­ing with mal­ice or with­out rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause.

Po­lice al­leged they had seen the pun­dit pluck­ing branch­es from mar­i­jua­na trees in a forest­ed area and claimed the lo­ca­tion con­tained about 500 mar­i­jua­na plants of vary­ing heights. They said the branch­es were placed in a black plas­tic bag and six mar­i­jua­na trees were up­root­ed and placed in a feed bag.

Ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cers, the pun­dit was then tak­en to his home, where an­oth­er bag con­tain­ing mar­i­jua­na was al­leged­ly found be­hind a cup­board next to a stove.

The of­fi­cers de­nied con­sum­ing al­co­hol dur­ing the stop at the bar, claim­ing Ma­haraj en­tered on­ly to pur­chase snacks and soft drinks. They not­ed that an­oth­er po­lice ve­hi­cle, dri­ven by an in­spec­tor and car­ry­ing Ramb­ha­jan, did not stop there.

Po­lice al­so claimed the seized mar­i­jua­na weighed a com­bined 3,050 grammes.

They main­tained Ma­haraj did not know the fam­i­ly per­son­al­ly, bore them no ill will and be­lieved there was a prop­er ba­sis for the charges.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Mo­hammed iden­ti­fied se­ri­ous pro­ce­dur­al fail­ures and in­con­sis­ten­cies in the of­fi­cers’ ev­i­dence.

“Thus, with the un­der­mined cred­i­bil­i­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty in the ev­i­dence of Sergeant Navin Ma­haraj and PC Ramb­ha­jan, I am not sat­is­fied that there was an hon­est be­lief as to the guilt of the claimants and there­fore I can­not find there to be a rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause for the ar­rest and charge of the claimants,” he stat­ed.

The judge was al­so crit­i­cal of what he de­scribed as ev­i­dence of col­lu­sion be­tween the of­fi­cers.

“Fur­ther, this court finds it par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing that two sep­a­rate state­ments, which were pur­port­ed to be in­de­pen­dent­ly draft­ed, and both be­ing type­writ­ten, were not on­ly iden­ti­cal in sig­nif­i­cant re­spects as it re­lates to its con­tents, but re­mark­ably as well in the er­rors and the hand­writ­ten rec­ti­fi­ca­tion of same,” Mo­hammed said.

“Such strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties lead this court to be­lieve that the state­ments were in fact pro­duced fol­low­ing pri­or dis­cus­sion be­tween Sergeant Navin Ma­haraj and PC Ramb­ha­jan.”

The court award­ed the pun­dit $160,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages. His wife and one child were each award­ed $150,000, while the oth­er two chil­dren re­ceived $80,000 each.

In ad­di­tion, each claimant was award­ed $30,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages. The State was al­so or­dered to pay $75,805 in spe­cial dam­ages, $83,997.23 in in­ter­est and $102,550 in le­gal costs.

TTPS re­sponds

At the week­ly me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Richard Tay­lor, head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Train­ing Acad­e­my, was asked whether the judg­ment high­light­ed short­com­ings in po­lice train­ing.

Tay­lor said the acad­e­my con­tin­u­al­ly re­in­forces prop­er polic­ing stan­dards but ac­knowl­edged of­fi­cers can de­part from those teach­ings while car­ry­ing out their du­ties.

“We can do all that we can do to en­force what is taught in the acad­e­my. Of­fi­cers some­times, in their en­thu­si­asm to car­ry out their du­ties, may drift or shift off and that is an is­sue that may cause a mat­ter to be thrown out or for them to be found guilty,” he said.

Tay­lor added that of­fi­cers of­ten have on­ly “a split sec­ond” to make de­ci­sions, while courts have con­sid­er­ably more time to as­sess whether those de­ci­sions were jus­ti­fied.

He said re­train­ing would con­tin­ue to en­sure of­fi­cers un­der­stand and com­ply with prop­er pro­ce­dures when in­ter­act­ing with the pub­lic.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, TTPS pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer, act­ing ASP Owie Rus­sell, said he had no in­for­ma­tion on the spe­cif­ic case but not­ed that the ser­vice gen­er­al­ly ad­dress­es any dis­ci­pli­nary breach­es by po­lice of­fi­cers.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin and the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ish­mael Pitt did not re­spond to calls or mes­sages for com­ment on the is­sue.

Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty di­rec­tor David West and for­mer com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith mean­while in­di­cat­ed that they would com­ment at a lat­er date as they had not seen the de­tails of the case.