Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Hours af­ter sur­ren­der­ing them­selves to po­lice six Cen­tral Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers, among them a sergeant, ap­peared be­fore a Ch­agua­nas mag­is­trate on three counts of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.Yes­ter­day, Sgt Ra­sool Balka­ran and Con­sta­bles Ve­da Per­sad, Sam­lal Seep­er­sad, El­ton Charlerie, Ramesh Boodram and Lyn­don Ho­sein ap­peared be­fore First Court mag­is­trate Gillian Scot­land charged with the March 11, 2010, of­fences.The of­fi­cers, ac­com­pa­nied by head of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, Sgt Anand Rame­sar, and oth­er of­fi­cials, walked in­to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion at 10.20 am where they sur­ren­dered af­ter war­rants were is­sued for their ar­rests.It stemmed from an al­leged taser gun at­tack on Tu­na­puna broth­ers, Ri­car­do and Randy Youk-See, 28 and 21, re­spec­tive­ly, and their 18-year-old neigh­bour, Ka­iron Bap­tiste, last year.

Per­sad, a fa­ther of two, with 16 years ser­vice; Seep­er­sad, a fa­ther of two; Boodram, 29, of Mamoral; Balka­ran, fa­ther of two, with 14 years ser­vice; Charlerie, of Ari­ma, a fa­ther of two; and Ho­sein, with 25 com­men­da­tions to his name and nine years ser­vice, are joint­ly charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice by as­sault­ing Ri­car­do and Randy Youk-See and Ka­iron Bap­tiste, by oc­ca­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm.Af­ter be­ing placed on $75,000 sure­ty bail the of­fi­cers, who have about 300 mat­ters be­fore the court in­volv­ing peo­ple they charged, were put in the prison van and tak­en to Re­mand Yard late yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.De­fence lawyer Kei­th Beck­les, who ap­peared for Balka­ran, Per­sad, Seep­er­sad, Boodram and Charlerie, ques­tioned the mer­it of the charges since he con­tend­ed it was the sec­ond time in 19 months the of­fi­cers faced ar­rest for the same al­leged in­ci­dent.

He al­so al­leged that the charges against Per­sad stemmed from his re­fusal to en­ter­tain a re­quest by Se­nior Supt Ed­ward Castil­lo, who charged the of­fi­cers, for pris­on­er, Kurt Castil­lo, his son.The at­tor­ney added that Balka­ran was ar­rest­ed and forced to en­dure an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rade at which he was not point­ed out.Beck­les ac­cused Castil­lo of ex­e­cut­ing "op­pres­sive" and "de­lib­er­ate" de­lay strate­gies to en­sure the of­fi­cers could not se­cure bail yes­ter­day.The at­tor­ney, who joined the of­fi­cers short­ly af­ter 11 am at the sta­tion, com­plained to Scot­land that since last week the of­fi­cers want­ed to "vol­un­tar­i­ly" give them­selves up to Castil­lo.How­ev­er, he said, "they were told there were some ad­min­is­tra­tive hic­cups."He said yes­ter­day af­ter the of­fi­cers sur­ren­dered Castil­lo used oth­er "strate­gies", in­clud­ing send­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer to Port-of-Spain for dis­ci­pli­nary no­tices for the six of­fi­cers to fur­ther de­lay their court ap­pear­ance at 2.33 pm.

Beck­les added: "I fail to un­der­stand the op­pres­sive man­ner when these of­fi­cers vol­un­tar­i­ly sur­ren­dered them­selves. It ap­pears to be a de­lib­er­ate strat­e­gy that the court staff will not be here and no bail will be grant­ed to the ac­cused. "I sus­pect they were brought at this hour that they ride the van so some ret­ribu­tive jus­tice can be met­ed out."Scot­land placed the of­fi­cers on $75,000 sure­ty bail to reap­pear in court on No­vem­ber 29.The vic­tims claimed they were beat­en, tor­tured and threat­ened with death by po­lice­men on the night of March 11 at the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion.They claimed they were kicked and hit with a golf stick and were shocked with a taser gun.