Leah So­rias

Drug ac­cused Khalil Kara­math and his wife, Sabeer­ah Mo­hammed, have been grant­ed a to­tal of $3 mil­lion in bail for four charges aris­ing out of an al­leged drug and gun find at the fam­i­ly's Val­sayn man­sion last week.

As part of their bail con­di­tion, the two were or­dered yes­ter­day to sur­ren­der their pass­ports and all trav­el doc­u­ments to the Clerk of the Peace. They al­so have to re­port every day to the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion be­tween 7 am and 7 pm. Dressed in the same clothes they wore on Mon­day and with con­cerned ex­pres­sions on their faces, the cou­ple stood be­fore act­ing Se­nior Mag­is­trate Joan Ever­s­ley-Gill, in the Port-of-Spain Four A Court. They were each grant­ed $1.5 mil­lion bail to be ap­proved by the Clerk of the Peace. In grant­i­ng bail, Ever­s­ley-Gill ad­vised them if they failed to re­port to the sta­tion or if they missed court hear­ings their bail would be re­voked.

Kara­math, 22, the son of de­ceased con­struc­tion mogul Hafeez Kara­math, and Mo­hammed, 23, were charged with pos­ses­sion of guns and am­mu­ni­tion, pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing and pos­ses­sion of de­vices used to smoke mar­i­jua­na. His sis­ter, Far­i­ana Kara­math, 29, and three oth­er rel­a­tives–two 15-year-old boys and Khubaib Ali, 17–were charged with pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na and the de­vices. How­ev­er, they were each grant­ed $85,000 bail with sure­ty by a Jus­tice of the Peace last Fri­day. Their mat­ter was ad­journed to De­cem­ber 15 and was trans­ferred to the Tu­na­puna Mag­is­trates' Court. The fam­i­ly is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Pamela El­der SC and at­tor­neys Owen Hinds Jnr, Om Lal­la and Der­rick Bal­li­ram. The six were ar­rest­ed af­ter of­fi­cers of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) al­leged­ly found 18 high-pow­ered guns, 980 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, 951 grammes of mar­i­jua­na and de­vices mod­i­fied for the use of il­lic­it drugs at Hafeez Kara­math's home last Thurs­day.

The of­fi­cers claimed they stum­bled up­on the il­le­gal items when they went in search of doc­u­ments and ma­te­r­i­al re­lat­ing to the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott). Hafeez Kara­math, 56, died last No­vem­ber af­ter bat­tling with an ill­ness for months. His con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, Hafeez Kara­math Con­struc­tion Ltd (HK­CL), be­came a main con­trac­tor for the much-de­layed Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um and Crick­et Acad­e­my, Tarou­ba. Kara­math re­port­ed­ly re­ceived a $100 mil­lion ad­vance for the project. Dur­ing their court ap­pear­ance on Mon­day, Ever­s­ley-Gill re­fused to give Khalil and Mo­hammed bail, say­ing she need­ed time to re­view their bail ap­pli­ca­tion.

When they re­turned yes­ter­day she told them since they had no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions she was con­strained by law to grant them bail. She said: "The pros­e­cu­tion's ob­jec­tion to bail was on the ba­sis that the court should take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the se­ri­ous­ness of the of­fence. "I agree. This mat­ter is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter which car­ries harsh penal­ties. We are liv­ing in very vi­o­lent times and the scourge of crime in so­ci­ety was as a re­sult of gun pos­ses­sion." She said while the point made by the pros­e­cu­tion was a valid one, the court had to be guid­ed by the Bail Act. She ex­plained: "In re­cent times, the Bail Act has been amend­ed be­cause of the present crime sit­u­a­tion but those amend­ments do not ap­ply to this case.

"The amend­ments ap­ply to peo­ple who have pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions." She said she had no in­for­ma­tion that led her to be­lieve Kara­math and his wife would leave the ju­ris­dic­tion of the court, if not kept in cus­tody, or would in­ter­fere with wit­ness­es or com­mit a crim­i­nal act. The two were re­leased from cus­tody just af­ter 4 pm yes­ter­day af­ter their bail was post­ed by rel­a­tives. There was no men­tion as to which rel­a­tive post­ed the bail. The mat­ter was trans­ferred to the Tu­na­puna Mag­is­trates' Court where it will come up for hear­ing on Sep­tem­ber