Frus­trat­ed that his salary was late and he had bills to pay, a wa­ter com­pa­ny em­ploy­ee ad­mit­ted to steal­ing $5,867.62 from his em­ploy­er.

Lutch­man Ra­goonath, 38, of Her­mitage Set­tle­ment, San Fer­nan­do, ap­peared in the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates Court on Thurs­day charged with steal­ing the amount.

On Sep­tem­ber 18 he stole the mon­ey from Crys­tal Wa­ters Ltd at Bat­too Av­enue, Mara­bel­la. How­ev­er, he was sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed and charged by PC Mat­loo of the Mara­bel­la CID. Ra­goonath, who worked at the com­pa­ny as a dri­ver, plead­ed guilty.

But, he told Se­nior Mag­is­trate Jo-Anne Con­nor that the rea­son he stole the mon­ey was be­cause the com­pa­ny was sup­posed to have paid him on Au­gust 25, but failed to do so. “I had bills to pay,” he said.

Based on his ex­pla­na­tion, the Mag­is­trate en­tered a not guilty plea on his be­half. She told him that his rea­son amount­ed to a “claim of right in law,” which is de­fence. She ad­vised him to seek le­gal ad­vice.

Apart from a con­vic­tion for drunk dri­ving, Ra­goonath said he had no oth­er crim­i­nal mat­ters. Pros­e­cu­tor Cley­on Seedan said the po­lice com­put­erised fin­ger­print trac­ing sys­tem was not work­ing, but a name check showed just that one con­vic­tion. A copy of the sum­ma­ry of ev­i­dence and ev­i­dence notes was hand­ed over to the ac­cused.

Ra­goonath was grant­ed his own bail and the mat­ter ad­journed to Oc­to­ber 29.