Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@gau­r­dian.co.tt

A La Ro­maine con­trac­tor has been cleared of six charges of de­fraud­ing the State of near­ly $600,000.

Ian Ja­hore, who was charged eight years ago, was freed yes­ter­day by High Court Mas­ter Whit­ney Franklin, af­ter the pros­e­cu­tion con­ced­ed there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to con­tin­ue the case.

Ja­hore was charged in 2017 by PC Navin Lutch­man of the San Fer­nan­do Fraud Squad. He had al­leged­ly is­sued forged Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion cheques payable to him­self, which were then cashed by an­oth­er per­son.

He first ap­peared in the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates’ Court, where the pros­e­cu­tion filed 11 state­ments from six civil­ian and two po­lice wit­ness­es. The mat­ter was trans­ferred to the Mas­ter’s Court in Ju­ly 2024, with di­rec­tions for both sides to file sub­mis­sions on whether the ev­i­dence dis­closed a pri­ma fa­cie case.

On May 12, Ja­hore’s at­tor­ney, Kevin Rati­ram, ar­gued the pros­e­cu­tion had failed to es­tab­lish a pri­ma fa­cie case. He said sev­er­al doc­u­ments the State sought to ten­der were in­ad­mis­si­ble be­cause the nec­es­sary ev­i­den­tial foun­da­tions had not been laid. He al­so not­ed the pros­e­cu­tion failed to call its main wit­ness — the per­son al­leged­ly giv­en the cheques — which was fun­da­men­tal to prov­ing its case.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing, pros­e­cu­tor An­tho­ny Ja­cob agreed with Rati­ram’s sub­mis­sions. He told Mas­ter Franklin he had con­sult­ed the TTPS le­gal of­fi­cer and the State would not be of­fer­ing any ev­i­dence against Ja­hore. He added that no in­dict­ment had been filed in the mat­ter, but even if it had, it would not have changed the out­come.

Mas­ter Franklin then grant­ed Rati­ram’s ap­pli­ca­tion to dis­charge Ja­hore on all charges.