Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A High Court Judge has dis­missed a case from a man who claimed he was framed for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion while de­liv­er­ing bread.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered last week, Jus­tice Bet­sy-Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son dis­missed the ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case brought by Shaz­im Baksh.

Baksh’s case cen­tred around his ar­rest on Jan­u­ary 19, 2018.

He claimed that he was de­liv­er­ing bread at a shop in Arou­ca and left his col­leagues to or­gan­ise the shop own­er’s or­der while he went to uri­nate be­hind the shop.

He claimed that when he fin­ished and went to wash his hands in the shop, he was con­front­ed by a group of po­lice of­fi­cers.

Baksh claimed that al­though he was searched and noth­ing il­le­gal was found, the of­fi­cers ac­cused him of be­ing the own­er of a bag of mar­i­jua­na, which they al­leged­ly found on the floor of the shop near him.

He was ar­rest­ed and charged with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion.

Baksh made nine court ap­pear­ances be­fore the charge was dis­missed for want of pros­e­cu­tion be­cause the po­lice of­fi­cer, who laid the charge, missed a hear­ing.

In de­fence of the case, the of­fi­cer iden­ti­fied as PC Ma­haraj de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

Ma­haraj claimed that he saw Baksh drop the bag when he ar­rived at the shop and that Baksh did not de­ny the mar­i­jua­na was his.

The of­fi­cer al­so claimed that he missed court as he was on study leave.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son strong­ly con­sid­ered that Baksh did not present any ev­i­dence to prove that he was de­liv­er­ing bread as claimed.

She point­ed out that he did not pro­vide cor­re­spon­dence from his al­leged em­ploy­er con­firm­ing his em­ploy­ment or ev­i­dence from his pur­port­ed col­leagues, who could have ex­plained what hap­pened to the de­liv­ery truck af­ter his ar­rest.

Stat­ing that she be­lieved the of­fi­cer’s ver­sion of the events over Baksh’s, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son found that he (the of­fi­cer) had rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause to charge him.

“There is no ev­i­dence that PC Ma­haraj had an im­prop­er mo­tive in lay­ing the charge that the Claimant had in his pos­ses­sion a dan­ger­ous drug,” she said.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Rachel Theophilus, Sharad Raghu­nath and Sav­it­ri Ma­haraj.