Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Five years af­ter two se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers were charged with con­spir­ing to per­vert the course of pub­lic jus­tice, they were ac­quit­ted on Thurs­day.

In­spec­tor Ra­jesh Gokool and Sgt Ken Ali walked free af­ter Ch­agua­nas Mag­is­trate Sa­nara Toon up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion from their at­tor­neys.

They were charged by Act­ing Cor­po­ral Kelvin Mar­cano of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau back in 2020. Dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry, State at­tor­neys Can­dice Bat­son and Sal­ly-Ann Dubar-Burgess pros­e­cut­ed, while Gookool and Ali were rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Kevin Rati­ram and Aaron Ma­habir, re­spec­tive­ly.

The pros­e­cu­tion ten­dered wit­ness state­ments from 13 po­lice of­fi­cers and eight civil­ians.

It was al­leged that on No­vem­ber 8, 2019, a par­ty of of­fi­cers, head­ed by Gookool and in­clud­ing Ali, found a firearm, am­mu­ni­tion and mar­i­jua­na at a fam­i­ly’s home in Cara­pichaima.

The po­lice al­so took pos­ses­sion of a DVR con­nect­ed to CCTV cam­eras on the premis­es. How­ev­er, the fam­i­ly claimed they were set up by the po­lice. They were, how­ev­er, charged with the of­fences.

Gokool sub­se­quent­ly sub­mit­ted a DVR to the po­lice Cy­ber Crimes Unit for analy­sis, but the DVR was not the one that had been seized from the house. The DVR tak­en from the house in Cara­pichaima was nev­er found.

The charge against Ali and Gokool al­leged that on a day un­known be­tween No­vem­ber 8 and 15, 2019, they con­spired to con­ceal or de­stroy a Hink­son DVR, which was ev­i­dence in the case against the fam­i­ly.

At the close of the pros­e­cu­tion’s case, the de­fence at­tor­neys ar­gued that the pros­e­cu­tion failed to present a pri­ma fa­cie case.

Rati­ram sub­mit­ted that the ev­i­dence showed that Gokool had in­no­cent­ly sub­mit­ted the wrong DVR and there was no ev­i­dence of any con­spir­a­cy be­tween him (Gookool) and Ali to sub­mit the wrong DVR.

Up­hold­ing the de­fence’s no case sub­mis­sion, the mag­is­trate found no ev­i­dence of any agree­ment be­tween the ac­cused to con­ceal or de­stroy the seized DVR. She then dis­charged both of­fi­cers.

In 2020, Gokool had sued the State and was sub­se­quent­ly award­ed $100,000 in dam­ages for false im­pris­on­ment. He had con­tend­ed that the po­lice kept him in cus­tody for an un­rea­son­ably long pe­ri­od while in­ves­ti­gat­ing him for the miss­ing DVR.