Cunupia bar owner acquitted of daughter’s friend’s murder

Derek Achong

A 51-year-old bar own­er from Cunu­pia has been freed of mur­der­ing a friend of his daugh­ter fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent at their home in 2020.

Kervin “Duffy” Har­ry­nar­ine was ac­quit­ted of the crime at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Nali­ni Singh on Thurs­day.

Har­ry­nar­ine was ac­cused of killing De­von Brown on June 21, 2020.

Har­ry­nar­ine and sev­er­al rel­a­tives were in the bar lo­cat­ed un­der his house when they re­port­ed­ly heard his daugh­ter scream from up­stairs.

The men rushed to her as­sis­tance and re­port­ed­ly found her fight­ing with Brown.

Har­ry­nar­ine was ac­cused of stab­bing Brown while he was run­ning out of the house.

Brown was found ly­ing at the side of the road with mul­ti­ple stab wounds and suc­cumbed to his in­juries at hos­pi­tal.

Har­ry­nar­ine and his then 27-year-old daugh­ter were ar­rest­ed, but on­ly he was even­tu­al­ly charged based on the ev­i­dence of his cousin’s son, Andy See­baran, who claimed that he saw Har­ry­nar­ine stab Brown.

Dur­ing the tri­al, Har­ry­nar­ine’s lawyer, Tara­dath Singh, raised nu­mer­ous in­con­sis­ten­cies in See­baran’s ev­i­dence over what al­leged­ly tran­spired.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Singh agreed that the wit­ness­es’ ev­i­dence, which pros­e­cu­tors claimed was cor­rob­o­rat­ed by CCTV footage, was un­re­li­able.

“I am not sat­is­fied, so that I am sure, that Andy See­baran ac­cu­rate­ly saw the ac­cused stab the de­ceased,” Jus­tice Singh said.

“The dif­fi­cul­ty lies in the com­bi­na­tion of the poor light­ing, the fast-mov­ing and chaot­ic na­ture of the in­ci­dent, the un­clear qual­i­ty of the video, and most im­por­tant­ly, the ma­te­r­i­al in­con­sis­ten­cies as to where Andy See­baran was po­si­tioned at the crit­i­cal mo­ment when he says he saw the stab­bing,” she added.

Jus­tice Singh not­ed that her find­ing did not mean that See­baran was be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly un­truth­ful.

“I recog­nise that hon­est wit­ness­es can be mis­tak­en, es­pe­cial­ly in stress­ful and fast-mov­ing cir­cum­stances,” she said.

“The dan­ger is whether, in the con­fu­sion of the strug­gle, in poor light­ing, from a dis­put­ed van­tage point, he ac­cu­rate­ly saw the ac­cused in­flict the stab wounds, rather than lat­er re­con­struct­ing the event from what he be­lieved had hap­pened or from what he lat­er saw on the video,” she added.

She not­ed that the video did not re­move rea­son­able doubt, as it did not clear­ly show Har­ry­nar­ine stab­bing Brown.

“That doubt is not spec­u­la­tive,” she said.