A 37-year-old man from Rio Claro was grant­ed bail in the sum of $100,000 with a sure­ty when he ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Alexan­der Prince at the Cou­va Mag­is­trates’ Court, on Au­gust 26 af­ter be­ing charged with in­de­cent as­sault.

As part of the bail con­di­tion, the man is re­quired to re­lo­cate to Tabaquite, have no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the vic­tim or her fam­i­ly mem­bers, stay 100 me­ters away from the vic­tim and her fam­i­ly mem­bers and re­port to the Gran Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion once per week.

The ac­cused is ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on 23rd Sep­tem­ber, 2022.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, on 14th June, 2022, a 17-year-old girl was await­ing trans­porta­tion to go to school, when some­one known to her of­fered her a lift.

The girl ac­cept­ed, how­ev­er, while on the way to school, the dri­ver made a de­tour and al­leged­ly touched the girl in­de­cent­ly.

Up­on re­ceiv­ing a re­port about the in­ci­dent, of­fi­cers of the Rio Claro Po­lice Sta­tion con­tact­ed the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) Cen­tral. The CPU de­tec­tives con­duct­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter, and the man was sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed and charged with the of­fence on Thurs­day Au­gust 25.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by W/ Su­per­in­ten­dent Claire Guy-Al­leyne, W/ASP Theodore-Per­sad, W/In­spec­tor Hospedales and W/Sergeant Ce­de­no. The charges were laid by PC Vi­jay Ramkissoon.