Derek Achong

A High Court Judge has or­dered $25,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for a man of south Trinidad, who was ar­rest­ed and de­tained for fail­ing to pay the re­main­ing $3,500 of a fine, which in fact was paid al­beit late. 

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Ralph Ra­jaram as he par­tial­ly up­held his law­suit against the State yes­ter­day. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, in Ju­ly 2015, Ra­jaram was or­dered to pay a $12,000 fine for pos­ses­sion of co­caine. 

Af­ter the dead­line for pay­ing the fine elapsed on Feb­ru­ary 4, that year, a war­rant was is­sued for Ra­jaram’s ar­rest as he owed a bal­ance of $3,500.

How­ev­er, Ra­jaram even­tu­al­ly paid the re­main­der on April 1.

On De­cem­ber 7, po­lice ex­e­cut­ed the war­rant at Ra­jaram’s home. He was de­tained at a po­lice sta­tion overnight and was on­ly re­leased af­ter pay­ing the bal­ance once again. 

Ra­jaram then pro­duced his re­ceipt from his last pay­ment and was re­fund­ed. 

In his judg­ment, Seep­er­sad ruled that Ra­jaram could not claim wrong­ful ar­rest and false im­pris­on­ment as the war­rant was le­git­i­mate­ly is­sued af­ter he failed to meet the dead­line. 

How­ev­er, Seep­er­sad up­held Ra­jaram’s claim that his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­tec­tion of the law was breached as he not­ed that the Ju­di­cia­ry should not have ac­cept­ed his late pay­ment know­ing that a war­rant had been is­sued. 

“Af­ter the re­ceipt of the pay­ment, that er­ror should have been de­tect­ed and ad­min­is­tra­tive arrange­ments ought to have been pur­sued to ei­ther re­call the war­rant or for a vol­un­tary and seam­less ex­e­cu­tion of same,” Seep­er­sad said. 

Seep­er­sad sug­gest­ed that it is un­fath­omable that elec­tron­ic records were not avail­able to pre­vent such an er­ror. 

“Such er­rors un­der­mine the pub­lic’s trust and con­fi­dence in in­sti­tu­tions of the State and in a so­ci­ety where in­sti­tu­tion­al dys­func­tion is man­i­fest­ing it­self with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy, the Ju­di­cia­ry must en­sure that its ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es are en­gaged ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly,” Seep­er­sad said. 

As he called for tech­no­log­i­cal im­prove­ments with­in the Ju­di­cia­ry, Seep­er­sad not­ed a sim­i­lar case he presided over, in­volv­ing a man who was im­prop­er­ly ar­rest­ed for fail­ing to pay a traf­fic tick­et, which he had in fact paid three years ear­li­er. 

In that case, Patrick Awong, the broth­er of Cou­va/Tabaquite Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man Hen­ry Awong, was award­ed $37,500 in com­pen­sa­tion. 

In as­sess­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for Ra­jaram, Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed his claims that he was threat­ened and ver­bal­ly abused by the po­lice and that he was de­nied his right to speak to his at­tor­ney. 

“The court holds the view that the claimant’s ar­rest was not high hand­ed nor was it mo­ti­vat­ed by ill will or mal­ice but the ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror which oc­curred can­not be mar­gin­alised and must be viewed as an ag­gra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance,” Seep­er­sad said. 

Ra­jaram was rep­re­sent­ed by Dane Halls, while Tiffany Kissoon rep­re­sent­ed the State.