Kali­fa Clyne

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS), through its lawyer, has served a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard re­quest­ing that the DPP in­forms the Ma­ha Sab­ha on the di­rec­tion he will take on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion re­port in­to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to dis­crim­i­na­to­ry award of a ra­dio li­cence to Citadel Lim­it­ed, in pri­or­i­ty to the SDMS.This was re­vealed by sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the SDMS Sat Ma­haraj dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the of­fice of his at­tor­ney, Jagdeo Singh Wood­brook.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the DPP has been giv­en a dead­line of 28 days to re­spond to the let­ter, fail­ing which the Ma­ha Sab­ha in­tends to ap­ply for a ju­di­cial re­view on the grounds of in­ter alia un­rea­son­able de­lay, con­trary to Sec­tion 15 of the Ju­di­cial Re­view Act and a con­tin­u­ing breach of, or omis­sion, to per­form his du­ty.The Ma­ha Sab­ha ap­plied for a ra­dio li­cence to op­er­ate in T&T over a decade ago but was de­nied. It was lat­er re­vealed that Citadel Lim­it­ed was grant­ed a ra­dio li­cence in an ex­pe­dit­ed mat­ter.

The Ma­ha Sab­ha suc­cess­ful­ly sued the State for dis­crim­i­na­tion in the San Fer­nan­do High Court, the Court of Ap­peal and the Privy Coun­cil.The Ma­ha Sab­ha filed a com­plaint to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in 2006 and a re­port was sub­mit­ted to the DPP in June 2010."To this day the DPP has not in­di­cat­ed what ac­tion he has tak­en. As a mat­ter of fact a year ago I per­son­al­ly wrote him ask­ing to tell us the sta­tus of this re­port but he did not even both­er to an­swer that re­quest," Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day.

Read­ing from the let­ter, Ma­haraj not­ed that the of­fice of the DPP had act­ed with "com­mend­able alacrity" in mov­ing to pros­e­cute for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) mem­bers un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.Ma­haraj said he was con­cerned by the "un­ex­plained and un­due de­lay of pros­e­cu­tions.He said his or­gan­i­sa­tion was ask­ing what di­rec­tion the DPP would take in the mat­ter."Whether to pros­e­cute or not to pros­e­cute? Was there in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence in front of him to pros­e­cute or not? Who are the per­sons to be pros­e­cut­ed?" asked Ma­haraj. (KC)