One of two lawyers ac­cused of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the il­le­gal adop­tion of a Venezue­lan in­fant, last year, has been freed.

When the case came up for hear­ing be­fore Mag­is­trate Adri­an Dar­manie in the Tu­na­puna Mag­is­trates’ Court, on Tues­day, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) in­formed the court that DPP Roger Gas­pard, SC, had used his dis­cre­tion to dis­con­tin­ue the charge against Annabelle Sook­lal.

The charges un­der the Sec­tion 9 of the Adop­tion of Chil­dren Act were main­tained against Caribbean Air­lines pi­lot Patrick Borel, 52, his 46-year-old wife Daniel­la Parinel­lo, Span­ish teacher Adri­ana Buen­dia-Rag­bir and at­tor­ney Ki­jana De Sil­va.

Un­der the leg­is­la­tion, a per­son con­vict­ed of ar­rang­ing an adop­tion, with­out the au­thor­i­ty to do so, is li­able to a $10,000 fine or up to two years in prison.

The group is al­leged to have com­mit­ted the of­fence be­tween Ju­ly 31 and Sep­tem­ber 30, last year.

It is al­leged that the group made adop­tion arrange­ments with the child’s bi­o­log­i­cal moth­er, who was re­port­ed­ly brought to Trinidad to give birth. She was then al­leged­ly co­erced in­to sign­ing over “tem­po­rary guardian­ship” to Borel and Parinel­lo.

When the woman re­turned home she re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties who re­ferred it to the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit in No­vem­ber, last year.

Sook­lal was rep­re­sent­ed by Pamela El­der, SC. The cou­ple is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Sean Caz­abon, while Sub­has Pan­day is rep­re­sent­ing Buen­dia-Rag­bir and Kei­th Scot­land is rep­re­sent­ing De Sil­va.

The case is ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing ear­ly next month.