Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Pe­nal res­i­dent Shawn Jaikaran was forced to use a wheel­chair yes­ter­day to ap­pear be­fore San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trate An­nette Mc Ken­zie on ex­tor­tion and as­sault charges. The San Fer­nan­do First Court se­nior mag­is­trate had to hear the mat­ter in the carpark in the Mag­is­trates' Court base­ment yes­ter­day since Jaikaran was nurs­ing gun shot wounds to both legs and was un­able to stand or walk.

Jour­nal­ists were barred from cov­er­ing Jaikaran's carpark ap­pear­ance. Cell­block po­lice closed the carpark gates and asked jour­nal­ists to stand away from the area as Jaikaran was wheeled out of the cell­block. Short­ly af­ter­wards, a po­lice of­fi­cer ap­proached re­porters and ad­vised them to stand clear of the gates. Five min­utes lat­er an­oth­er of­fi­cer told jour­nal­ists to stand across the street since they were not al­lowed to be near­by. Jaikaran's at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh said the 28-year-old was brought to court by am­bu­lance.

Po­lice pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Ku­mar Ram­lochan said the man was un­able to walk since he was shot in the right leg with the bul­let pen­e­trat­ing the oth­er. Mc Ken­zie said she want­ed the man to ap­pear be­fore her but she was not go­ing in­to the cell­block area. Ram­lochan said arrange­ments were made to have the man ap­pear in the carpark area. Jaikaran was charged with as­sault­ing PC George at La Ro­maine in an at­tempt to pre­vent ap­pre­hen­sion on Au­gust 27, 2010.

He was al­so charged with ex­tort­ing $10,000 from a La Ro­maine fam­i­ly be­tween the Au­gust 27 and Au­gust 28, 2010. He was not called up­on to plead as In­sp Thomas laid the charges in­dictably. Ram­lochan ob­ject­ed to bail claim­ing he had in­for­ma­tion that Jaikaran, once re­leased, would in­ter­fere with pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es. Mc Ken­zie ad­journed the mat­ter to this morn­ing for the pros­e­cu­tion to pro­vide ev­i­dence to sup­port the al­le­ga­tion.