The Court of Ap­peal has re­served its de­ci­sion in the State’s ap­peal over a mag­is­trate’s de­ci­sion to free al­leged gang leader Ra­jaee Ali on a charge of pos­ses­sion of the car­cass of a pro­tect­ed an­i­mal out­side of the hunt­ing sea­son.

Ap­pel­late Judges Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon and Mal­colm Holdip de­ferred their de­ci­sion on the ap­peal af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions from Ali’s lawyers and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) yes­ter­day morn­ing.

In the ap­peal, the DPP’s Of­fice is con­tend­ing that Mag­is­trate Deb­by Ann Basaaw got it wrong when she up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion in Ali’s case in April 2019.

Ali’s lawyers had con­tend­ed that pros­e­cu­tors failed to prove that the head­less car­cass be­longed to a pro­tect­ed an­i­mal un­der the Con­ser­va­tion of Wildlife Act. The leg­is­la­tion makes it an of­fence to hunt a pro­tect­ed an­i­mal or pos­sess its car­cass out­side the per­mit­ted pe­ri­od.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions yes­ter­day, Ali’s lawyer Mark Seep­er­sad chal­lenged the ev­i­dence of game war­den Glen­ford Doyle, who was deemed an ex­pert wit­ness and iden­ti­fied the an­i­mal as a lappe based on the fact that it had four toes on its hind legs as op­posed to an agouti or capy­bara, which has three toes.

Seep­er­sad asked whether Doyle was qual­i­fied to con­duct species iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. He al­so took is­sue with how pros­e­cu­tors ad­dressed the le­gal is­sue of con­struc­tive pos­ses­sion as he claimed his client was mere­ly a pas­sen­ger in the car where the car­cass was found.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, Deputy DPP Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal ad­mit­ted that Doyle did not have sci­en­tif­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions but claimed he was en­ti­tled to per­form the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion based on his lengthy ex­pe­ri­ence as a game war­den. She al­so con­tend­ed that the mag­is­trate mis­con­strued Doyle’s ev­i­dence in dis­miss­ing the case.

Ali was ar­rest­ed along with two men near their homes in Cara­po, Ari­ma, in Au­gust 2014, af­ter po­lice found the car­cass in the trunk. One of the men pre­vi­ous­ly plead­ed guilty to the of­fence and was fined, while the oth­er al­so ben­e­fit­ed from Mag­is­trate Bas­saw’s rul­ing.

The max­i­mum penal­ty for the of­fence is a $1,000 fine or three months im­pris­on­ment.

Their ar­rests oc­curred dur­ing the two-year mora­to­ri­um on hunt­ing in­sti­tut­ed by for­mer min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh to help the coun­try’s de­plet­ed wildlife stocks re­cov­er.

What­ev­er the out­come of the ap­peal, it will be ar­guably in­con­se­quen­tial for Ali, who is await­ing tri­al with nine mem­bers of his al­leged gang for mur­der­ing In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, on May 4, 2014. Ali and four oth­ers have al­so been com­mit­ted to stand tri­al for con­spir­ing to mur­der Slam 100.5 an­nounc­er Ke­vaughn “Lur­bz” Sa­vory on No­vem­ber 27, 2014.

Ali was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Roshan To­ta-Ma­haraj.