Sascha?Wil­son

As a se­nior mag­is­trate freed the man charged with the mur­der of Po­lice Con­sta­ble Anil Per­sad who was shot in the for­est dur­ing a po­lice ex­er­cise, she heav­i­ly crit­i­cised the po­lice ev­i­dence in the mat­ter.

Rio Claro res­i­dent Man­ickc­hand Ra­jaram who was al­so charged with oth­er of­fences aris­ing from the May 2011 mur­der walked out of the Rio Claro Mag­is­trates Court a free man on Thurs­day af­ter Mag­is­trate Armi­na De­onar­i­nesingh up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion made by de­fence at­tor­ney Ash­ton Di­ananth.

In giv­ing her de­ci­sion, De­onar­i­ne­sigh said there were too many holes in the po­lice ev­i­dence and too many ques­tions were left unan­swered.

Ra­jaram was ar­rest­ed and charged two years af­ter Per­sad was shot and af­ter his moth­er, Rad­i­ca Ma­haraj-Per­sad, led a pub­lic cam­paign de­mand­ing jus­tice for her son's death.

She had ques­tioned whether her son was ac­ci­den­tal­ly shot by one of his own col­leagues and they were afraid to tell the truth.

Rul­ing that a pri­ma fa­cie case had not been made out against Ra­jaram, the mag­is­trate said she was not sat­is­fied with the ev­i­dence as too many ques­tions were left unan­swered.

While she thanked state pros­e­cu­tor Sarah de Sil­va for her com­pre­hen­sive and elo­quent sub­mis­sions, the mag­is­trate said the ev­i­dence was dis­cred­it­ed and un­re­li­able.The mag­is­trate added it was clear from the po­lice com­plainant ASP Hen­dron Moses' de­meanour that the case was just hand­ed to him and he did what he did. She added that it was not the court's du­ty to con­nect the dots.

Moses was among 12 po­lice wit­ness­es and a sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer who gave ev­i­dence in the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, which be­gan last year. Ra­jaram was charged in 2013 with Per­sad's mur­der, six counts of shoot­ing with in­tent, pos­ses­sion of arms and am­mu­ni­tion and pos­ses­sion of 39 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing.

Per­sad was killed dur­ing a mar­i­jua­na erad­i­ca­tion ex­er­cise in the Cushe/Charu­ma for­est on May 12, 2011.

The state's case was that Per­sad, who had nine years ex­pe­ri­ence, was among a par­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers who was fired up­on by one of five men who were tend­ing mar­i­jua­na plants in the for­est.

The po­lice al­leged the shoot­er was Ra­jaram. Per­sad turned to run and was shot in the back. Po­lice re­turned fire killing two of the men iden­ti­fied as Te­eleckc­hand Ar­joon, 46, and Jagdeo Seecha­ran, 47. The oth­er two men ran off.

Per­sad, who was at­tached to the Rio Claro Po­lice Sta­tion, was air­lift­ed some two hours lat­er to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he sub­se­quent­ly died.

An au­top­sy found he bled to death.

Three guns, five buck­ets of mar­i­jua­na and sev­er­al mar­i­jua­na trees were ten­dered in­to ev­i­dence dur­ing the in­quiry at the end of which Di­ananth made the no-case sub­mis­sion.