Renu­ka Singh

Sus­pend­ed Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cer, 32-year-old Roger Ra­jku­mar, has been gagged by his at­tor­neys and can no longer speak about his al­leged in­volve­ment in the vi­o­lent slap­ping of a wheel-chair bound para­plegic Rob­by Ram­char­i­tar.

The T&T Guardian met with Ra­jku­mar at a rel­a­tive's home in Princes Town yes­ter­day and while he is abid­ing by his lawyer's in­struc­tions, Ra­jku­mar de­nied that he has ever spo­ken to any me­dia house since the al­leged in­ci­dent oc­curred on De­cem­ber 27."If I want­ed to speak to any me­dia, I would speak to them just like I am speak­ing to you. But I have not spo­ken to any­one and I see­ing my­self quot­ed. What is that?" Ra­jku­mar said.

He had copies of two oth­er news­pa­per re­ports, high­light­ing and un­der­lin­ing por­tions of the pub­lished ar­ti­cle that he plans to send to his lawyer."This is ma­li­cious and dam­ag­ing to my char­ac­ter," Ra­jku­mar said.

Ra­jku­mar was work­ing on ex­tra du­ty, hired by the own­ers of a near­by jew­el­ry store as se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing the busy Christ­mas sea­son. But while Ra­jku­mar is re­fus­ing to speak on the ac­tu­al in­ci­dent that led to his sus­pen­sion, a close rel­a­tive de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as an "edit­ed set-up". The rel­a­tive de­nied that Ra­jku­mar slapped Ram­char­i­tar, de­scrib­ing it as a swift re­ac­tion to the threat of be­ing spat on.

His fam­i­ly is sup­port­ive, al­so deny­ing that Ra­jku­mar slapped Ram­char­i­tar, say­ing that with his eight years of mar­tial arts train­ing, he re­act­ed quick­ly to the threat of be­ing spat on and that he pushed Ram­char­i­tar's face away on two oc­ca­sions.

The in­ci­dent, which was record­ed by an un­known in­di­vid­ual and up­loaded to Face­book, al­leged­ly shows Ra­jku­mar slap­ping Ram­char­i­tar. The video was quick­ly shared on so­cial me­dia pages and be­came a pop­u­lar top­ic of dis­cus­sion. Both Ra­jku­mar and a fe­male of­fi­cer al­so seen in the video have since been sus­pend­ed pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Ra­jku­mar said he was not aware of the ac­tions of the fe­male of­fi­cer un­til he saw the video and does not know who she is. This, his rel­a­tives sug­gest, is more cun­ning video edit­ing done to make it look like both of­fi­cers at­tacked the man in suc­ces­sion."I did not know that hap­pened, I was just cross­ing the road when he ap­proached me ask­ing for mon­ey, when he saw my po­lice iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, then he be­came abu­sive," Ra­jku­mar said.

A rel­a­tive said yes­ter­day that the video was de­lib­er­ate­ly edit­ed to re­move the curs­ing and ob­scene lan­guage by the man in the wheel­chair. The edit­ed ver­sion of the video, he claims, al­so re­moved the Ram­char­i­tar's threat to spit on Ra­jku­mar."The street was qui­et, yet you hear­ing a Vibez Kar­tel song while the man speak­ing, why is there no oth­er noise, no oth­er back­ground noise but that song and on­ly when the man speak­ing?" the fam­i­ly mem­ber ques­tioned.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers said there had been sev­er­al pre­vi­ous en­coun­ters with the own­ers of stores op­po­site where the of­fi­cer was work­ing and they be­lieve that the edit­ing of the video was done de­lib­er­ate­ly to "get back" at Ra­jku­mar."Sev­er­al times he had to buff them for park­ing on the wrong side of the road and for block­ing his view of the door­way of the store he was hired to pro­tect," he said.

This too he is dis­cussing with his at­tor­ney."He has said that when the re­al video is shown, the unedit­ed ver­sion, he doesn't mind if peo­ple judge him on that," the rel­a­tive said.

Ra­jku­mar has been an SRP for just nine months and in that time has writ­ten out over 350 ci­ta­tions, in­clud­ing sev­er­al for ob­scene lan­guage and dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence."He stud­ied mar­tial arts for years, be­lieve me, if he slap some­one, they will lay down," the rel­a­tive said.

Ra­jku­mar's rel­a­tives be­lieve that the de­ci­sion to sus­pend him and the fe­male of­fi­cer was as a re­sult of pub­lic out­cry."No­body asked my side of the sto­ry yet but still I got sus­pend­ed," Ra­jku­mar said.The T&T Guardian has since learned that Ra­jku­mar and his le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive will be meet­ing with the in­ves­ti­ga­tors to­day.