A 38-year-old man from Cara­po has been freed of mur­der­ing an Arou­ca busi­ness­man with­out hav­ing to go on tri­al.

Re­nal­do “Hamza” Thomas, of Uni­ty Lane, Cara­po, was dis­charged by High Court Mas­ter Sarah De Sil­va af­ter State pros­e­cu­tors of­fered no ev­i­dence against him dur­ing his suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing, yes­ter­day.

Thomas and an­oth­er man from Mal­abar, Ari­ma, were ac­cused of mur­der­ing Nicholas Mo­hith on March 11, 2021.

Mo­hith, 31, was at his fam­i­ly’s home along the East­ern Main Road in Arou­ca, where his au­to air con­di­tion­ing busi­ness was al­so lo­cat­ed when an un­masked gun­man en­tered and shot him in his ab­domen be­fore run­ning away.

Mo­hith was tak­en to the Ari­ma Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope where he died while un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery.

The suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing for Thomas and his co-ac­cused was ex­pect­ed to com­mence in Au­gust, last year, but was post­poned be­cause State pros­e­cu­tors failed to dis­close the ev­i­dence against them to their de­fence at­tor­neys.

Al­though Mas­ter De Sil­va grant­ed sev­er­al ex­ten­sions, there was no dis­clo­sure in re­la­tion to Thomas when the case came up for hear­ing yes­ter­day.

State pros­e­cu­tors sought an­oth­er ex­ten­sion but Mas­ter De Sil­va re­fused based on the fact that like pre­vi­ous­ly they sought to make the ap­pli­ca­tion af­ter miss­ing the dead­line in­stead of giv­ing 14 days’ no­tice as re­quired un­der the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules.

Thomas and his co-ac­cused were ar­raigned and pros­e­cu­tors of­fi­cial­ly in­di­cat­ed that they had no ev­i­dence to of­fer in re­la­tion to him (Thomas).

Mas­ter De Sil­va then dis­charged him un­der sec­tion 24 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA) on the ba­sis that the ev­i­dence against him did not meet the nec­es­sary thresh­old.

She not­ed that the dis­charge was not based on the pro­vi­sions of the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules deal­ing with non-com­pli­ance with dis­clo­sure, as she ref­er­enced the fact that in oth­er cas­es ac­cused per­sons, who were freed un­der such, were im­me­di­ate­ly re­ar­rest­ed and the in­dict­ment re­filed against them.

The case against Thomas’ co-ac­cused was con­tin­ued as pros­e­cu­tors dis­closed ev­i­dence against him in­clud­ing CCTV footage of the shoot­ing.

De­spite the out­come, Thomas was not im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased from re­mand as he has a pend­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing charge be­fore the To­ba­go Mag­is­trate’s Court for which he was not grant­ed bail be­cause of the mur­der charge.

Mas­ter De Sil­va sug­gest­ed to Thomas’ lawyer Roshan To­ta-Ma­haraj that he reap­ply for bail for Thomas on the less­er charge based on a sig­nif­i­cant change of cir­cum­stance. —DEREK ACHONG