Resh­ma Ra­goonath

A 28-year-old sol­dier who al­leged­ly bit a po­lice of­fi­cer dur­ing a dis­pute over the week­end was on Mon­day re­fused bail when he and his cousin ap­peared in the Siparia Mag­is­trates' Court on nine charges. Videsh Sookoo, of Main Road, Todd's Road, and his cousin Hem­raj Gopaul, 21, of Quar­ry Vil­lage, Siparia, stood be­fore Siparia First Court Mag­is­trate Joanne Con­nor, charged with com­mit­ting the of­fences on Au­gust 21, 2011. The men, both of whom were rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Ram­nar­ine Soor­jans­ingh, have been charged with in­flict­ing griev­ous bod­i­ly harm on Khem­nath Lal­la, 55, and two counts of as­sault­ing PC Sookoo and PC Al­lah to pre­vent law­ful ap­pre­hen­sion, and two counts of re­sist­ing ar­rest.

The cousins were al­so charged with two counts of ma­li­cious dam­age to gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty, name­ly two po­lice shirts. They plead­ed not guilty. Sookoo was charged sep­a­rate­ly with us­ing ob­scene lan­guage. He plead­ed not guilty. All charges were laid by Sgt Shel­don Ablacks­ingh. Soor­jans­ingh ap­plied for bail. How­ev­er, court pros­e­cu­tor Sgt An­gus Har­ry ob­ject­ed. He said Lal­la, of Ack­aloo Trace, was ward­ed at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in an un­sat­is­fac­to­ry con­di­tion and it was on these grounds that he ob­ject­ed to bail. Con­nor re­fused the men bail and re­mand­ed them in­to cus­tody. They will reap­pear in court on Sep­tem­ber 5.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Sook­lal and Al­lah re­spond­ed to a re­port around 1 am at Pluck Road, San Fran­cique. When they ar­rived, they found Lal­la ly­ing un­con­scious on the road­way with in­juries to the head. He was bleed­ing from the ears. Sookoo and Gopaul were ap­proached. The of­fi­cers at­tempt­ed to ar­rest the men. Al­lah was al­leged­ly bit­ten on the thumb while Sook­lal al­leged­ly re­ceived in­juries to his hands.