JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL

Well-known drug lord Phillip “The Boss” Boodram, who was re­leased from prison this year af­ter be­ing ini­tial­ly con­vict­ed of the 2015 kid­nap­ping and killing of busi­ness­woman Sam­daye Ram­per­sad, was shot dead by po­lice on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

Boodram was one of three men killed by po­lice dur­ing a shootout in Es­per­an­za, Cou­va.

The oth­er men were iden­ti­fied as Mal­ick Paul of Rail­way Road and Ger­ard Thor­ing­ton of Good­will Road, En­ter­prise.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice sources, po­lice of­fi­cers re­spond­ing to a re­port of a rob­bery were chas­ing the men in a ve­hi­cle.

They said the men opened fire at po­lice of­fi­cers, and the of­fi­cers re­turned fire, killing all three of them.

Po­lice of­fi­cers at the scene said they re­cov­ered three il­le­gal firearms.

Boodram’s death comes less than three months af­ter his re­lease from prison.

On June 30, Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed, Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon and Prakash Moo­sai up­held an ap­peal from Boodram, Ricky Singh, Roger Mootoo, Kervin Williams, and Aaron Grap­pie, over their manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion.

The men ini­tial­ly re­ceived a 28-year-sen­tence for Ram­per­sad’s mur­der, but they were re­leased in 2022 af­ter serv­ing 17 years of their sen­tence.

The ap­peal pan­el’s de­ci­sion was based on er­rors made by the High Court judge who over­saw the de­fen­dants’ sec­ond re­tri­al in 2016.

Jus­tice Yorke-Soo Hon said:

"In our view, giv­en the se­ri­ous na­ture of the er­rors made by the tri­al judge, the mul­ti­ple ma­te­r­i­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties iden­ti­fied, along with the fact that the fair­ness of the tri­al was se­vere­ly com­pro­mised due to the ad­verse pub­lic­i­ty dur­ing the course of the tri­al, com­bined with the is­sues sur­round­ing the ev­i­dence of the pros­e­cu­tion's main wit­ness, Roderique, our hands are tied and we have no al­ter­na­tive but to al­low this ap­peal."

Deputy DPP Joan Honare-Paul in­formed the court that a re­tri­al was not re­quired, re­sult­ing in the im­me­di­ate re­lease of the men.

Ram­per­sad was kid­napped by masked men from her Pe­tit Bourg home on No­vem­ber 25, 2005.

Her body was found 41 days lat­er in a shal­low grave in a cashew field in Car­oli­na Vil­lage, Clax­ton Bay.

Foren­sic pathol­o­gist Hughvon des Vi­gnes tes­ti­fied that Ram­per­sad had been buried alive.