Deputy Managing Editor
History often remembers landmark constitutional cases by the lawyers who argued them or the judges who decided them. Rarely does it remember the smallest person at the centre of the dispute.
But in 1984, one of Trinidad and Tobago’s most unusual constitutional battles was fought not by a politician, businessman or activist, but by a two-year-old boy.
His name was Rishi Gobin.
Too young to understand the courtroom proceedings around him, the toddler became the applicant in what was believed to be the country’s first constitutional challenge arguing that a citizen child’s right to family life would be violated if the State deported his mother.
It was a case that forced the High Court to confront questions that had never before been tested in Trinidad and Tobago. Could a Trinidad-born child prevent the deportation of his foreign-born mother? Could the Constitution protect not only a person’s right to remain in the country, but also a child’s right to grow up with his mother?
More than four decades later, the case remains a fascinating chapter in the country’s legal history.
A mother’s fight
The story began with Doris Gobin, a Guyanese national who first came to Trinidad in 1979. Court documents showed that she had exchanged letters with Trinidadian pen pal Lallman Rasul Gobin since 1974 before travelling to Trinidad to meet him.
The relationship blossomed, and the couple married according to Hindu rites on July 1, 1981. Less than a year later, on May 13, 1982, their son Rishi was born at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital.
By birth, he was a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago.
For a time, life appeared normal. Mrs Gobin obtained a work permit and later received resident status through what authorities believed was a valid marriage to a citizen.
Then everything changed.
Authorities discovered that her husband had fraudulently obtained his citizenship documents. He was convicted in 1983 of forging documents, sentenced to prison and later deported to Guyana.
With the basis for her residency removed, Mrs Gobin’s residence permit was revoked and deportation proceedings followed.
Facing removal, she turned to the courts—not for herself, but through her two-year-old son.
An unprecedented argument
Represented by attorney Bindra Dolsingh, Rishi filed a constitutional motion against the Attorney General and the Chief Immigration Officer.
The legal strategy was extraordinary. Rather than arguing that Doris Gobin herself had constitutional protection against deportation, the application asserted that her Trinidad-born son possessed constitutional rights that would be violated if the State removed his mother.
The application sought declarations that the threatened deportation contravened his constitutional rights and that he was entitled to the care and protection of his mother in Trinidad and Tobago until adulthood.
The case relied primarily on Section 4(c) of the Constitution, which guarantees “the right of the individual to respect for his private and family life.”
As the matter unfolded, it became clear that no court in Trinidad and Tobago had previously interpreted that protection in such circumstances.
Justice George Edoo acknowledged that “a claim for relief for the infringement of this right has never been invoked in this jurisdiction.”
A mother’s fears
Court documents revealed why Mrs Gobin feared returning to Guyana with her son.
In an affidavit, she described a country struggling with severe economic hardship.
“If he was forced to return with me to Guyana his chances of survival as a well-developed human being will be severely reduced,” she told the court. “In Guyana malnutrition among children is a serious evil.” She also detailed widespread unemployment, deteriorating schools and a lack of teachers and educational supplies.
“There is no adequate supply of books or even writing paper,” she stated.
Mrs Gobin said she could work in the catering industry to provide for her son while ensuring his proper religious upbringing.
To support her claims, medical and human rights evidence was submitted, including a psychiatric assessment and a United States Congressional report on conditions in Guyana.
Testing the Constitution
The legal arguments reached beyond immigration law.
Justice Edoo examined constitutional jurisprudence from Canada and Bermuda, as well as the European Convention on Human Rights.
He referred to the Privy Council decision in Minister of Home Affairs v Fisher, in which Lord Wilberforce recognised “the unity of the family as a group” and observed that young children should rarely be separated from their mothers.
The judge also considered international declarations on children’s rights.
The case therefore became larger than a dispute involving one family. It asked the court to determine how constitutional rights should be interpreted and whether a citizen child’s rights could indirectly protect a non-citizen parent.
The decision
When judgment was delivered on February 5, 1985, the High Court dismissed the application.
Justice Edoo accepted that Rishi, as a citizen, could not be deported, noting the State’s undertaking not to remove him.
However, the judge concluded that the Constitution did not give his mother a derivative right to remain simply because her son was a citizen.
“The application,” Justice Edoo ruled, “is not in reality that of the child.”
He found that, “under the guise of protecting the rights of the child, the mother seeks... to benefit from the provision in the Constitution of rights guaranteed to the child.”
Justice Edoo held that the Immigration Act, rather than constitutional proceedings, was the appropriate avenue for challenging the deportation order.
“I have no doubt that the application is totally misconceived and is an abuse of the process of the court,” he concluded.
A case that endured
Doris Gobin lost her constitutional challenge, but the case left an enduring legacy.
It was among the earliest attempts to test the constitutional meaning of “family life” in Trinidad and Tobago. The judgment explored international human rights principles and children’s rights at a time when such issues were far less common in Caribbean courts.
It also exposed the human stories beneath immigration disputes: families divided by borders, parents seeking security and courts balancing compassion with the rule of law.
The little boy at the centre of the case could not understand the principles being debated around him, yet his name became part of the country’s legal history.
More than 40 years later, Gobin v Attorney General remains one of Trinidad and Tobago’s most unusual constitutional cases—not because a toddler defeated the State, but because the courts were asked whether the Constitution itself could protect the bond between a mother and her child.
Research for this article was gathered from original reporting by former Trinidad Guardian reporter Francis Joseph in June 1984.
