Sto­ries by

Derek Achong

A fe­male po­lice of­fi­cer who is one of the State’s main wit­ness­es against six of her for­mer col­leagues ac­cused of mur­der­ing three friends over a decade ago, has had to ob­tain an in­junc­tion to re­in­state her wit­ness pro­tec­tion se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the of­fi­cer, whose name was with­held due to the na­ture of the case and the sta­tus of the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings re­lat­ed to it, sought the in­junc­tion af­ter the se­cu­ri­ty de­tail which was as­signed to her since en­ter­ing the Jus­tice Pro­tec­tion Pro­gramme al­most a decade ago, was re­moved on No­vem­ber 18.

Two Fri­days ago, High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran grant­ed an emer­gency in­junc­tion for the im­me­di­ate re­in­state­ment of the se­cu­ri­ty de­tail for the safe house she is be­ing housed at.

In the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, the of­fi­cer claimed that she was with­out the se­cu­ri­ty de­tail for al­most a week and was con­cerned as she had re­ceived nu­mer­ous death threats in the past.

Her lawyers claimed that the re­moval was con­trary to the pro­vi­sions of the Jus­tice Pro­tec­tion Act.

When the of­fi­cer’s sub­stan­tive case came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad last Wednes­day, her at­tor­neys in­di­cat­ed that the in­junc­tion was com­plied with with­in 24 hours of it be­ing served on the par­ties.

They al­so in­di­cat­ed that they would con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty over the con­tin­u­a­tion of the case in which it and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice were list­ed as de­fen­dants.

The po­si­tion was wel­comed by Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, who praised the par­ties for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the talks.

“Giv­en the fac­tu­al ma­trix, all the par­ties should be on the same page. It should not re­al­ly pro­ceed on an ad­ver­sar­i­al ba­sis,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ad­journed the case to this Wednes­day when the par­ties are ex­pect­ed to pro­vide an up­date to the court.

The of­fi­cer, who is on sus­pen­sion, was ini­tial­ly charged with the triple mur­der along­side her col­leagues but the charges against her were dropped af­ter she made a State wit­ness al­most a year lat­er.

In 2018, an in­dict­ment for a less­er charge of con­spir­a­cy to per­vert the course of jus­tice was filed against the of­fi­cer.

How­ev­er, she has not plead­ed guilty to the charge as she is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a sep­a­rate case against Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, over the pro­vi­sions of a plea agree­ment.

In Ju­ly, High Court Judge Nor­ton Jack re­fused an ap­pli­ca­tion to grant the of­fi­cer’s col­leagues bail based on a land­mark Court of Ap­peal judge­ment on the abil­i­ty of judges to con­sid­er bail for mur­der.

The vic­tims’ fam­i­lies have al­so filed a law­suit seek­ing $2 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion each for their wrong­ful deaths.

That case went to tri­al in 2018 but had to be re­as­signed to an­oth­er judge af­ter Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran re­cused him­self from the case based on the fact that the fam­i­lies’ lawyer Kei­th Scot­land rep­re­sent­ed him in an un­re­lat­ed mat­ter.

The case was re­as­signed to an­oth­er High Court Judge but was not de­ter­mined as he was sub­se­quent­ly el­e­vat­ed to the Court of Ap­peal. The case is still pend­ing.

The of­fi­cer is rep­re­sent­ed by Michael Rooplal, Kristy Mo­han, Vis­han Gir­war and Gisanne Ramjit.