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Friday, July 4, 2025

Magistrate weighs community service for chutney star

by

Derek Achong
1389 days ago
20210913
Flashback: Chutney soca star Omadath Maharaj during one of his many performances.

Flashback: Chutney soca star Omadath Maharaj during one of his many performances.

RISHI RAGOONATH

A mag­is­trate is con­sid­er­ing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice for chut­ney singer Oma­dath Ma­haraj af­ter he plead­ed guilty to drunk dri­ving, yes­ter­day. 

Mag­is­trate Du­ane Mur­ray raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice af­ter hear­ing a mit­i­ga­tion plea from Ma­haraj’s lawyer Bhi­mal Ma­hara­jh dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Ma­haraj, 56, of Las Lo­mas, was charged af­ter po­lice re­spond­ed to a car ac­ci­dent he was in­volved in along the Ca­roni South Bank Road in Ca­roni on Ju­ly 24. 

Al­though nei­ther Ma­haraj nor the oth­er per­son in­volved in the ac­ci­dent suf­fered any in­juries, a breathal­yser test was ad­min­is­tered and Ma­haraj had a read­ing of 85 mi­cro­grammes of al­co­hol for every 100 mil­li­l­itres of breath. The le­gal lim­it is 35.

In call­ing for le­nien­cy, Ma­hara­jh not­ed that his client has been an en­ter­tain­er for al­most 25 years and is the leader of the Spread Pal Crew band.

“A con­vic­tion would mean Mr Ma­haraj’s in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed,” Ma­hara­jh said as he claimed that his client is booked to per­form in the Unit­ed States in No­vem­ber. 

Ma­hara­jh claimed that on the day of the ac­ci­dent, Ma­haraj, known for his hits “Ram­s­ingh” and “Balkissoon”, was mourn­ing the death of a mem­ber of his band. 

He claimed that Ma­haraj vis­it­ed the de­ceased band mem­ber’s home and took four shots of rum with rel­a­tives and friends. 

“Al­though it was not the cor­rect thing to do they were in a pe­ri­od of mourn­ing,” Ma­hara­jh said. He sug­gest­ed that the high breathal­yser read­ing was pos­si­bly due to Ma­haraj drink­ing on an emp­ty stom­ach. 

Ma­hara­jh al­so pre­sent­ed sev­er­al tes­ti­mo­ni­als from fel­low chut­ney singers and Ma­haraj’s neigh­bours. 

One of the tes­ti­mo­ni­als was from George Singh, of Southex Event Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny, which runs the an­nu­al Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion. Maraj tied for first place in the 2017 edi­tion and was the run­ner-up the fol­low­ing year. 

In con­sid­er­ing the sen­tence for Ma­haraj,  Mur­ray ques­tioned his con­cern for his ca­reer as he not­ed that Maraj still took the risk to drink and dri­ve. 

“If your lifestyle and wel­fare are im­por­tant to you, you have to be re­spon­si­ble,” Mur­ray said. 

“You ei­ther drink and re­lax un­til you fig­ure that you are good to dri­ve, get a des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver, or don’t drink at all,” he added. 

While Mur­ray con­sid­ered Ma­haraj’s clean crim­i­nal record and that no one was in­jured in the ac­ci­dent, he not­ed that the court would not send a mes­sage to would-be per­pe­tra­tors if he “walked away with a slap on the wrist”.

Mur­ray re­quest­ed a pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer’s re­port on Ma­haraj’s suit­abil­i­ty to per­form com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice and ad­journed the case un­til Jan­u­ary 4. Once Mur­ray con­sid­ers the re­port and he will set the hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice Ma­haraj has to per­form. When Ma­haraj com­pletes the com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, he can ap­ply to the court to strike the con­vic­tion from his crim­i­nal record. 


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