Resh­ma Ra­goonath

For­mer po­lice court pros­e­cu­tor Dane Sorzano yes­ter­day sought to have his name barred from pub­li­ca­tion in the me­dia, claim­ing pre-tri­al pub­lic­i­ty in his rape mat­ter.How­ev­er, act­ing deputy Chief Mag­is­trate Ra­jen­dra Ram­bachan, pre­sid­ing in the San Fer­nan­do First Court, re­ject­ed the ap­pli­ca­tion for a me­dia gag and di­rect­ed Sorzano to raise his con­cerns with the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.Ram­bachan told Sorzano there were in­stances where com­plaints of pre-tri­al pub­lic­i­ty were raised with the DPP and they were re­viewed.

He al­so point­ed to Sec­tion 41 of the In­dictable Of­fences Act which sets out the guide­lines of pub­li­ca­tion for the me­dia. The me­dia are al­lowed to pub­lish names and ad­dress­es of the ac­cused, the state­ment of charge and the rul­ing of the court.Sorzano is charged with hav­ing sex­u­al in­ter­course with a 15-year-old school­girl last April 3 at La­dy Hailes Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do. In­sp Zamsheed Mo­hammed laid the charge.

Sorzano, who has 15 years' ser­vice, was or­dered as a con­di­tion of bail to re­port to the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion every Thurs­day be­fore 10 am and to keep a record of his vis­its. Yes­ter­day, armed with news­pa­per ar­ti­cles, he ap­plied for a vari­a­tion of the con­di­tion, ask­ing that it be re­moved.He con­tend­ed there were oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers fac­ing charges be­fore the courts and such a con­di­tion was not placed in their bail.Sorzano said there were eight mat­ters be­fore the court, in­clud­ing the High Court, where peo­ple were charged with rape and griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault and bail was grant­ed with­out the con­di­tion of hav­ing to re­port to a po­lice sta­tion.

How­ev­er, pros­e­cu­tor Trevor Jones ar­gued against the ap­pli­ca­tion for vari­a­tion. He said giv­en re­cent events with sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers fac­ing the court it would send a wrong sig­nal. The mag­is­trate var­ied the con­di­tion of the bail and or­dered that Sorzano re­port to the Fyz­abad Po­lice Sta­tion on Wednes­days be­fore 9 pm.His case was ad­journed to De­cem­ber 12.