The State has been or­dered to pay over $125,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a pair of fish­er­men from Moru­ga, whose boat was seized and de­tained for al­most four years with­out law­ful jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. 

Mar­cus Dover and Ra­jesh Lal­too won their law­suit over the seizure, lead­ing to the re­turn of the boat late last year, but the com­pen­sa­tion owed to them was on­ly as­sessed by High Court Mas­ter Wren­er­son Lochan last week. 

The duo’s pirogue “Fresh Cash” was seized by po­lice of­fi­cers on No­vem­ber 2, 2021. 

The men gave per­mis­sion to an em­ploy­ee to use the boat on a fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion. 

He was stopped while try­ing to re­turn to shore in Ce­dros. Al­though noth­ing il­le­gal was found, the boat and its two Yama­ha 75 HP out­board en­gines were seized. 

The boat was sub­se­quent­ly hand­ed over to of­fi­cers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion. 

Al­though the duo sought the re­lease of the boat by sup­ply­ing reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­men­ta­tion from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and statu­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tions prov­ing own­er­ship, it was not re­leased. 

The duo, through their lawyer Richard Jag­gasar, filed a law­suit for det­inue and con­ver­sion against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. 

The case was even­tu­al­ly up­held by High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in, who ruled that there was no law­ful ba­sis for the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion. 

She or­dered the re­lease of the boat and en­gines as well as com­pen­sa­tion for loss of use of the boat. 

When the boat and en­gines were re­turned, the men dis­cov­ered that one en­gine need­ed re­pairs and the oth­er was miss­ing. 

Mas­ter Lochan ruled that they had to be com­pen­sat­ed for the costs of re­pair­ing the en­gine and re­plac­ing the oth­er and or­dered $52,441.88 in com­pen­sa­tion. 

He al­so or­dered $75,000 for loss of use of the ves­sel as he not­ed that they were de­prived of their tools of their trade. 

Dover pro­vid­ed a wit­ness state­ment in which he claimed that he and Lal­too used their sav­ings to pur­chase the boat and would take care of their fam­i­lies us­ing the mon­ey they earned from us­ing it for fish­ing. 

In a state­ment, Jag­gasar not­ed that the case showed that agents of the State had a du­ty to re­turn seized items with­in a rea­son­able time if they can­not jus­ti­fy the need for con­tin­ued de­ten­tion. 

Jag­gasar al­so not­ed that his clients had dif­fi­cul­ties prov­ing the full loss­es they suf­fered based on the na­ture of their jobs. 

“Jus­tice in this coun­try can­not de­pend on whether a man can af­ford ac­coun­tants, staff, au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments and so on. These are fish­er­men, and like many not too long ago and many to­day, they earn in cash, they work by the tide and weath­er, and they feed their fam­i­lies hon­est­ly,” Jag­gasar said. 

“If the State can seize a work­ing man’s boat, hold it for years with­out charge, lose his en­gine, dam­age the oth­er and then ex­haust the ju­di­cial sys­tem for four years, that is abuse of pow­er,” he added. 

The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Mary Davis and Nairob Smart.