Israel Khan: PM’s allegations constitute criminal conduct

Akash Sama­roo

Pres­i­dent of the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion, Is­rael B Khan, SC, says Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s al­le­ga­tion that two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors sought per­son­al favours in ex­change for sup­port­ing the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) bill amounts to a claim of se­ri­ous crim­i­nal con­duct and must be for­mal­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Khan said if the al­le­ga­tion is true, it would con­sti­tute the com­mon law of­fences of cor­rup­tion and so­lic­it­ing a bribe.

He not­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter had claimed that dur­ing de­bate on the leg­is­la­tion, two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors ap­proached a se­nior Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor seek­ing per­son­al favours in ex­change for se­cur­ing sup­port and the re­main­ing votes need­ed for the bill’s pas­sage.

Khan said such an ac­cu­sa­tion, now placed in the pub­lic do­main, casts a cloud over the en­tire in­de­pen­dent bench, as the pub­lic has not been told which two sen­a­tors were al­leged­ly in­volved.

“It al­so casts se­ri­ous crim­i­nal be­hav­iour on the oth­er sev­en Pres­i­dent’s sen­a­tors, since the peo­ple of the re­pub­lic re­main un­aware as to who were the two sen­a­tors al­leged­ly seek­ing this bribe,” Khan stat­ed.

He said it was now in­cum­bent on Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo to sum­mon the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to de­ter­mine whether any such ap­proach was made and whether the al­le­ga­tion has any fac­tu­al ba­sis.

Khan ar­gued that the mat­ter must be re­port­ed to the po­lice for a full crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

He added that the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions should al­so move im­me­di­ate­ly to re­quest that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice ini­ti­ate an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the claims.

“Nev­er in the his­to­ry of this coun­try has such a scan­dalous crim­i­nal al­le­ga­tion been made against par­lia­men­tar­i­ans,” Khan said.

The Prime Min­is­ter has not named the sen­a­tors she claims were in­volved. —Akash Sama­roo