An em­ploy­ee of the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands, Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, has been ac­quit­ted of a forgery charge.

Robert Mo­hammed, a pa­trol­man, was found not guilty by Jus­tice Nali­ni Singh on Wednes­day, fol­low­ing a tri­al.

The charge stemmed from a forged doc­u­ment which was re­ceived by the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands in De­cem­ber 2020. A re­port was made to the Fraud Squad Of­fice in Port-of-Spain.

In March 2022, of­fi­cers from the Fraud Squad ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at his home and al­leged­ly dis­cov­ered an orig­i­nal copy of the same forged doc­u­ment in one of his ve­hi­cles. Mo­hammed was charged with pos­ses­sion of a forged doc­u­ment.

Dur­ing the tri­al, Mo­hammed’s le­gal team, led by at­tor­ney Is­rael Khan SC and in­clud­ing Aris­sa H Ma­haraj, point­ed to what they con­sid­ered to be se­ri­ous er­rors by Fraud Squad of­fi­cers in the course of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Af­ter the pros­e­cu­tion closed its case, Mo­hammed’s at­tor­ney made a no case sub­mis­sion, but it was over­ruled.

Mo­hammed tes­ti­fied on his own be­half.

He de­nied be­ing in pos­ses­sion of the forged doc­u­ment and claimed that he was not shown any doc­u­ments or where in his ve­hi­cle the doc­u­ments were al­leged­ly found.

Af­ter con­sid­er­ing the ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions in the case, the judge ac­quit­ted Mo­hammed.

The pros­e­cu­tion team was rep­re­sent­ed by state at­tor­neys Nor­ma Pe­ters and Shanelle Kissoon. —Sascha Wil­son