Sto­ries by Derek Achong

A failed law­suit against the State, over an in­ci­dent at the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates’ Court in which he was al­leged­ly beat­en by a po­lice of­fi­cer, is set to cost a man ac­cused of mur­der $14,000.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment at the end of a brief vir­tu­al tri­al on Tues­day, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed David Sook­lal’s as­sault and bat­tery case against the State. 

Based on Sook­lal’s le­gal de­feat, Seep­er­sad or­dered him to foot the le­gal bill in­curred by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in de­fend­ing the case. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed dur­ing the tri­al, the in­ci­dent oc­curred on Jan­u­ary 7, 2016, while Sook­lal was be­ing led back in­to the hold­ing cells at the court af­ter mak­ing an ap­pear­ance be­fore a mag­is­trate. 

Sook­lal, who was hand­cuffed at the time, claimed he was walk­ing down a flight of stairs when an of­fi­cer, who was lat­er iden­ti­fied as PC Bas­deo Ram­per­sad, called out to him. 

Sook­lal claimed that Ram­per­sad told him that he (Ram­per­sad) was re­lat­ed to the man he was charged with mur­der­ing be­fore at­tack­ing him. 

Sook­lal al­so said he was pushed to the floor and re­peat­ed­ly kicked by Ram­per­sad. He al­so claimed that Ram­per­sad hit him sev­er­al times with a pad­lock. 

He claimed that the at­tack on­ly end­ed when he called out to Ram­per­sad’s col­leagues and they in­ter­vened. 

In his de­fence, Ram­per­sad de­nied ini­ti­at­ing the con­fronta­tion. 

He claimed he was as­sist­ing in es­cort­ing Sook­lal to the hold­ing cells when he (Sook­lal) man­aged to re­lease one of his hands from the hand­cuffs. 

He claimed that Sook­lal at­tacked him us­ing the hand­cuff as an im­pro­vised weapon. 

He said af­ter a brief strug­gle he was able to re­strain Sook­lal by briefly kneel­ing on his chest. 

Ram­per­sad said that he al­so sus­tained in­juries in the con­fronta­tion and had to seek med­ical at­ten­tion. 

While be­ing cross-ex­am­ined by Sook­lal’s lawyer Ger­ald Ramdeen, Ram­per­sad claimed that Sook­lal suf­fered his in­juries when he fell on the “jagged” con­crete floor. 

He sug­gest­ed that his in­juries were less se­vere than Sook­lal’s as he was wear­ing tac­ti­cal gear at the time. 

“I suf­fered less in­juries be­cause of what I was wear­ing,” he said. 

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that Ram­per­sad’s ver­sion of the events was more plau­si­ble and that he was act­ing in self-de­fence. 

“The re­al­i­ty is that it was not a tea par­ty set­ting. It is a lo­ca­tion where ten­sions could be high,” he said. 

He stat­ed that Sook­lal may have ex­ag­ger­at­ed his claims about what tran­spired. 

“The court felt the de­gree of in­juries re­flect­ed on the med­ical cer­tifi­cate did not co­in­cide,” Seep­er­sad said. 

He sug­gest­ed Sook­lal’s chest in­juries were pos­si­bly caused when Ram­per­sad kneeled on his chest and his head in­juries by falling on the con­crete floor. 

Seep­er­sad al­so point­ed out that Sook­lal could not ex­plain how Ram­per­sad suf­fered the in­juries he did. 

He al­so ques­tioned Sook­lal’s claims of al­leged­ly be­ing beat­en with the pad­lock. 

“There was no gate for Ram­per­sad to have to un­lock,” he said, as he stat­ed that Sook­lal would have made a re­port to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) if his al­le­ga­tions against Ram­per­sad were in­deed true. 

Sook­lal was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Dar­ryl Heer­alal, while San­jiv Sookoo and Nisa Sim­mons rep­re­sent­ed the State.