Resh­ma Ra­goonath

A Williamsville man who ad­mit­ted that he false­ly re­port­ed that he was hi­jacked and his car stolen be­cause he want­ed to get away from pay­ing his ve­hi­cle loan in­stall­ments has been fined $800 for wast­ing po­lice time. Ra­jesh Baldeo, 22, a PH taxi dri­ver, of Ku­mar Vil­lage, re­ceived a tongue-lash­ing on Wednes­day when he ap­peared be­fore San Fer­nan­do Fourth Court mag­is­trate Re­han­na Ho­sein for the Au­gust 8 of­fence. Ho­sein told Baldeo: "Don't you re­alise that the po­lice al­ready have enough to do with­out hav­ing to in­ves­ti­gate false re­ports?"

"I am very sor­ry," Baldeo replied. The court heard that on Au­gust 8, at the Gas­par­il­lo Po­lice Sta­tion, Baldeo caused waste­ful em­ploy­ment of po­lice time by know­ing­ly mak­ing a false re­port to PC Robert Ram­lo­gan that he had been robbed of his mo­tor ve­hi­cle. Baldeo plead­ed guilty. In his de­fence, he said: "Things re­al slow on the road be­cause of the (school) va­ca­tion...I was afraid of los­ing the ve­hi­cle and the mon­ey I paid on it."

"You see that was a very skewed way of think­ing. Why don't you save up and pay?" the mag­is­trate asked.

Baldeo was or­dered to pay $800 by to­mor­row or serve three months in jail with hard labour. Po­lice pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Rudy Ali told the court PC Ram­lo­gan was on du­ty at the po­lice sta­tion when Baldeo made a re­port that he was hi­jacked by two men and robbed of his $20,000 car and $2,500. Ram­lo­gan car­ried out in­quiries, then record­ed a state­ment from Baldeo, in which he ad­mit­ted that the re­port he made was false. He told Ram­lo­gan: "Boss I lied about the whole thing be­cause I own­ing mon­ey for the car. I dri­ve to Mayo and park it at the side of the road."