Sascha Wil­son

A Clax­ton Bay man, who claimed he was beat­en and framed by the po­lice, has been award­ed $150,000 in dam­ages in a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion claim.

Rul­ing in favour of Kr­ish­na Seedarie, Jus­tice Bet­sy-Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son found that the State’s wit­ness, Con­sta­ble Den­zil Deena, had fab­ri­cat­ed ev­i­dence and that his (Seedarie) pros­e­cu­tion was ma­li­cious and with­out rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause.

Seedarie was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram.

In his wit­ness state­ment, Seedarie re­called that he was with his in-laws at Men­doza Dri­ve, Phillip­ine, around 9 pm on In­de­pen­dence Day 2013, when Deena and an­oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer, PC Sookram, came to the house and called out to him.

Seedarie said he walked out to the gate and was told by the of­fi­cers that a do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed re­port was made against him. He de­nied the al­le­ga­tions but claimed PC Sookram threat­ened to ar­rest him.

Seedarie said, “Deena opened the gate, grabbed me by my up­per arm and pulled me on­to the area be­tween the gate and the road, while say­ing, ‘Come, yuh lock up.’ Shocked, I replied, ‘I ent do noth­ing. Why al­lyuh lock­ing me up?’”

Deena, Seedarie claimed, pulled him in­to the road­way and slammed him against the po­lice ve­hi­cle.

“He then be­gan to choke me. Sookram then be­gan to cuff me in the area of my face and head. I be­gan to scream,” he claimed.

He was hand­cuffed and bun­dled in­to the trunk of the po­lice ve­hi­cle and tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion.

Seedarie claimed while the of­fi­cers were tak­ing him to the cell, PC Deena struck him on his low­er back, caus­ing him to fall for­ward, hit his shoul­der on a wall and hit his chin on the ground. When he was placed in the cell, he said he re­alised his chin was bleed­ing.

Seedarie said his broth­er, an as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dent of po­lice, ar­rived at the sta­tion and in­struct­ed that he be tak­en for med­ical at­ten­tion.

He claimed that when they left the sta­tion, Sookram of­fered to re­lease him if he did not re­port that he was beat­en. He agreed.

Seedarie said he sub­se­quent­ly sought med­ical at­ten­tion. How­ev­er, the fol­low­ing month, Deena charged him with ob­scene lan­guage and re­sist­ing ar­rest.

Seedarie filed pri­vate crim­i­nal charges against the of­fi­cers but sub­se­quent­ly dropped the mat­ter.

Fol­low­ing a tri­al, he was found not guilty in Jan­u­ary 2019. How­ev­er, in his wit­ness state­ment, Deena de­nied Seedarie’s ver­sion of the in­ci­dent, adding that nei­ther he nor Sookram as­sault­ed Seedarie.

He claimed Seedarie ap­peared to be high­ly in­tox­i­cat­ed, used ob­scene lan­guage and pulled away his hand vi­o­lent­ly when he tried to ar­rest him.

He al­so claimed Seedarie was bang­ing his head on the back glass of the po­lice ve­hi­cle while they were on their way to the po­lice sta­tion. He said when were en­ter­ing the sta­tion, Seedarie slammed his head on the sta­tion door.

Deena fur­ther claimed that while they were tak­ing Seedarie to the cell, he (Seedarie) placed his feet un­der a ta­ble, caus­ing him to trip, fall to the ground and hit his chest. He said they sub­se­quent­ly re­leased him on the in­struc­tions of Seedarie’s broth­er, who was a se­nior of­fi­cer.

In her rul­ing, the judge re­ferred to a note in the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion di­ary on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2013, which made no men­tion of Seedarie us­ing ob­scene lan­guage or re­sist­ing ar­rest dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

Cit­ing Seedarie’s med­ical re­port, she said the in­juries sup­port­ed Seedarie’s ver­sion of how the in­ci­dent oc­curred, while the in­juries were not con­sis­tent with Deena’s ac­count.

She con­sid­ered as ag­gra­vat­ing fac­tors that Seedarie was a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer at the time of the in­ci­dent, of good char­ac­ter and that the in­ci­dent took place in front of his two chil­dren.

The judge or­dered the state to pay $70,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages, in­clud­ing ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages, with in­ter­est, $50,070 in spe­cial dam­ages and costs.

Seedarie was award­ed $149,778.35 in to­tal. The state was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Janique Mitchell and Hillary Mud­deen.