Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A man has lost his case over be­ing held on a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) for al­leged­ly en­gag­ing in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Vigel Paul struck out Al­ix Ram­dass’ case chal­leng­ing his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion.

Jus­tice Paul’s de­ci­sion was not based on the mer­its of the le­gal ar­gu­ments raised by Ram­dass’ lawyer, but rather their fail­ure to seek per­mis­sion to pur­sue the case be­fore fil­ing it.

The PDO against Ram­dass was is­sued on March 15.

Ram­dass was ac­cused of be­ing the leader of an or­gan­ised crime group en­gaged in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and of seek­ing to mur­der per­ceived ri­vals.

“The de­tainee is al­so iden­ti­fied as main­tain­ing ex­ten­sive and cor­rupt in­flu­ence over var­i­ous law en­force­ment per­son­nel, al­leged­ly pay­ing of­fi­cers to con­duct il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties on his be­half and pro­vid­ing them with in­for­ma­tion,” the PDO said.

“The de­tainee and oth­ers are part of an es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lent com­pe­ti­tion for con­trol of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions which pos­es a sub­stan­tial and im­mi­nent threat to pub­lic safe­ty due to the high risk of reprisal shoot­ings and gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence in pub­lic spaces,” it added.

Ram­dass lodged a chal­lenge be­fore the State of Emer­gency (SoE) Re­view Tri­bunal, and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der pro­vid­ed more par­tic­u­lars jus­ti­fy­ing his de­ci­sion to is­sue the PDO.

Ram­dass’ chal­lenge was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed by the tri­bunal, which or­dered his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion.

Ram­dass then filed a civ­il law­suit which was as­signed to Jus­tice Paul.

In re­sponse to the law­suit, Alexan­der’s lawyers, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, took is­sue with Ram­dass’ fail­ure to seek leave to pur­sue the ju­di­cial re­view case.

Ram­dass’ lawyers, Ian Brooks and Seana Ba­boolal, re­quest­ed that Jus­tice Paul retroac­tive­ly con­sid­er the is­sue. They al­so sug­gest­ed that the pro­ce­dure, un­der which a judge con­sid­ers whether a lit­i­gant has an ar­guable case with a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess, was not re­quired, as the case is a hy­brid with con­sti­tu­tion­al el­e­ments as op­posed to a strict ju­di­cial re­view.

Jus­tice Paul ruled that the case was a ju­di­cial re­view that re­quired the court’s pri­or leave to pur­sue.

He stat­ed that leave pro­ce­dure was re­quired to en­sure friv­o­lous, hope­less, or vex­a­tious claims do not pro­ceed and af­fords pro­tec­tion to pub­lic au­thor­i­ties, who would have to re­spond to un­mer­i­to­ri­ous lit­i­ga­tion. He found that he could not retroac­tive­ly con­sid­er the is­sue af­ter the case had been com­menced in the way it was.

Alexan­der was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Jared Ja­groo, Lester Chari­ah and Lemuel Mur­phy.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Pamela El­der, SC, Gay­a­tri Dass, Sheena Ra­goo­bar and Brent James.

The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was rep­re­sent­ed by Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan.