Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing nine men, for­mer­ly ac­cused of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man, have rub­bished the ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, for their suc­cess in a $20 mil­lion ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case against the State.

In a press re­lease is­sued af­ter Ar­mour host­ed a me­dia con­fer­ence on the is­sue, Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan and Ganesh Sa­roop, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, de­scribed the claim that the case file dis­ap­peared af­ter it was served on the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs in June 2020, as ridicu­lous and amus­ing.

“We can say, with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion by any­one, that the facts will eas­i­ly demon­strate that the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was kept ful­ly abreast of this case at every step of the lit­i­ga­tion,” they said.

“In­deed, the Court it­self is­sued no­ti­fi­ca­tions to the State as the mat­ter pro­gressed and we ful­ly com­plied with our du­ty to serve the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments on the State through­out the course of the mat­ter,” they added.

They al­so ques­tioned how two at­tor­neys from the AG’s Of­fice could have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the as­sess­ment of dam­ages in the case, on which High Court Mas­ter Martha Alexan­der ruled on Mon­day, with­out the case file.

“Ar­mour’s in­sin­u­a­tion that his own le­gal team con­duct­ed an en­tire tri­al to as­sess the dam­ages in this mat­ter be­fore the High Court with­out a file is star­tling, stu­pen­dous and crazy,” they said.

“Were this to oc­cur, it would be a se­ri­ous breach of the Code of Ethics. It is a disin­gen­u­ous at­tempt to throw his own lawyers un­der the bus.”

They al­so re­ject­ed any veiled sug­ges­tion that they were in­volved in a plot to make the file dis­ap­pear to en­sure their suc­cess in the case.

“Hav­ing re­turned from the Ba­hamas, it is clear Mr Ar­mour was haunt­ed by im­ages of Mr Ram­lo­gan, SC, dressed in a black cov­er­all with a hood­ie pulled over his head and a dark shades sneak­ing past his se­cu­ri­ty to break in­to his of­fice in the dead of night to steal this file so he could win this case,” they said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, a High Court Judge al­so de­scribed what tran­spired as a trav­es­ty, as he claimed Ar­mour’s pre­lim­i­nary po­si­tion ap­peared to be de­void of mer­it.

He said the State at­tor­neys who reg­is­tered an ap­pear­ance in the case but failed to file a de­fence should have sought a copy of the file af­ter it al­leged­ly dis­ap­peared.

“As pru­dent pro­fes­sion­als and mind­ful that there is a stip­u­lat­ed pe­ri­od with­in which the de­fence must be filed, they ought to have re­alised that the file was gone and should have pro­ceed­ed to ap­ply to the court for copies or call the oth­er side,” he said.

Say­ing the State may have had a valid de­fence to the case based on the process the ac­cused men went through be­fore even­tu­al­ly be­ing ac­quit­ted, he ques­tioned why the State at­tor­neys who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the as­sess­ment of dam­ages did not ap­ply for the de­fault judge­ment to be set aside.

“In the cir­cum­stances, the en­tire sce­nario sim­ply re­in­forces the ev­i­dent re­al­i­ty that dys­func­tion and a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty abounds,” he said.

He not­ed that when he him­self had been called up­on by lit­i­gants to grant de­fault judge­ments when the State failed to file a de­fence, he would still con­duct a tri­al to de­ter­mine whether they had proved their case based on the ev­i­dence in­stead of au­to­mat­i­cal­ly grant­i­ng it, as was ap­par­ent­ly done in the group’s case.