Man granted $400,000 bail in father’s death

Bran­don Lal­be­har­ry has been grant­ed $400,000 bail on a manslaugh­ter charge aris­ing from the al­leged killing of his fa­ther.

As a con­di­tion of his bail, Lal­be­har­ry must move out of his home and have no con­tact with pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es, some of whom are re­lat­ed to him.

He ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore High Court Mas­ter Deli­cia Bethelmy to­day. Lal­be­har­ry was ar­rest­ed on Jan­u­ary 22 at his fa­ther’s fu­ner­al. In­ves­ti­ga­tors lat­er met with Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Sab­ri­na Jaglal, who, af­ter re­view­ing the ev­i­dence, ad­vised that Lal­be­har­ry be charged with manslaugh­ter.

Po­lice ini­tial­ly re­ceived a re­port that Lal­be­har­ry’s fa­ther, 63-year-old Ramesh Lal­be­har­ry, had fall­en from a tree at his Bar­rack­pore home on Jan­u­ary 1 and lat­er died on Jan­u­ary 6 at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Pros­e­cu­tor Rae­gan Ra­manan ob­ject­ed to bail, cit­ing a pend­ing charge of ma­li­cious wound­ing and con­cerns that the wit­ness­es are re­lat­ed to Lal­be­har­ry.

How­ev­er, de­fence at­tor­ney Frank Git­tens said Lal­be­har­ry posed no threat to the gen­er­al pub­lic and not­ed that he was the sole bread­win­ner for his two chil­dren.

The mas­ter or­dered that Lal­be­har­ry now re­side at Lal­too Trace, Pe­nal, and re­port twice a week at the po­lice sta­tion. The charge was laid by Act­ing Cor­po­ral Hug­gins.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to June 12 for a sta­tus hear­ing, while the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing was ad­journed to Sep­tem­ber 30.