Bran­don Lal­be­har­ry has been grant­ed $400,000 bail on a manslaugh­ter charge aris­ing from the death of his fa­ther.

As a con­di­tion of his bail, Lal­be­har­ry is re­quired to va­cate his home and have no con­tact with pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es, some of whom are re­lat­ed to him.

He ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore High Court Mas­ter Deli­cia Bethelmy yes­ter­day.

Lal­be­har­ry was ar­rest­ed on Jan­u­ary 22 dur­ing his fa­ther’s fu­ner­al. In­ves­ti­ga­tors sub­se­quent­ly con­sult­ed with Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Sab­ri­na Jaglal who, af­ter re­view­ing the ev­i­dence, ad­vised that Lal­be­har­ry be charged with manslaugh­ter.

Po­lice ini­tial­ly re­ceived a re­port that Lal­be­har­ry’s fa­ther, 63-year-old Ramesh Lal­be­har­ry, had fall­en from a tree at his Bar­rack­pore home on Jan­u­ary 1. He lat­er died on Jan­u­ary 6 at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Dur­ing the bail hear­ing, pros­e­cu­tor Rae­gan Ra­manan ob­ject­ed to bail, cit­ing a pend­ing charge of ma­li­cious wound­ing and con­cerns that pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es are re­lat­ed to the ac­cused.

How­ev­er, de­fence at­tor­ney Frank Git­tens ar­gued that Lal­be­har­ry posed no threat to the gen­er­al pub­lic and em­pha­sised that he is the sole bread­win­ner for his two chil­dren.

In grant­i­ng bail, Mas­ter Bethelmy or­dered that Lal­be­har­ry re­side at an ad­dress along Lal­too Trace, Pe­nal, and re­port to the po­lice sta­tion twice week­ly.

The charge was laid by Act­ing Cor­po­ral Hug­gins.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to June 12 for a sta­tus hear­ing, while a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing was sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 30.