Derek Achong

A man from Princes Town has been ac­quit­ted of kid­nap­ping and as­sault­ing a fel­low res­i­dent in 2022.

Shawn Ab­dool was found not guilty of the of­fences at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore High Court Judge Nali­ni Singh on Mon­day.

Ab­dool, a scaf­fold­er, was ac­cused of at­tack­ing Roger Pow­ell on De­cem­ber 30, 2022.

Pow­ell claimed that he was walk­ing along Man­a­ham­bre Road in Princes Town af­ter leav­ing a pop­u­lar bar when he was al­leged­ly at­tacked by Ab­dool and two oth­er men.

Pow­ell claimed that the men knocked him un­con­scious and placed him in a ve­hi­cle.

He claimed that they drove to a re­mote lo­ca­tion where they con­tin­ued to beat him.

He claimed that he was “play­ing dead”, and Ab­dool stamped on his chest sev­er­al times be­fore leav­ing with his al­leged ac­com­plices.

Tes­ti­fy­ing in his de­fence, Ab­dool ad­mit­ted slap­ping Pow­ell out­side the bar but de­nied ab­duct­ing him with the oth­er men.

Ab­dool’s lawyer Tara­dath Singh (no re­la­tion) raised sev­er­al in­con­sis­ten­cies with Pow­ell’s ev­i­dence and al­so not­ed that he (Pow­ell) ad­mit­ted he was heav­i­ly in­tox­i­cat­ed at the time of the in­ci­dent.

He al­so point­ed out that Pow­ell could not pro­vide de­tails on the car that was al­leged­ly used to trans­port him and de­scrip­tions of the two men who he claimed as­sist­ed Ab­dool. He al­so ques­tioned why Pow­ell did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­port the pur­port­ed at­tack to the po­lice af­ter it end­ed.

In ac­quit­ting Ab­dool, Jus­tice Singh found that she was not sat­is­fied be­yond rea­son­able doubt that Ab­dool was guilty of the crimes.

She al­so not­ed that some of Pow­ell’s claims were not sup­port­ed by med­ical re­ports and took is­sue with the fact that Pow­ell claimed to have seen Ab­dool stamp­ing on his chest while al­leged­ly pre­tend­ing to be un­con­scious.