Con­gress of the Peo­ple po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har be­lieves there is an at­tempt to hu­mil­i­ate and dri­ve Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher out of of­fice.

The po­lit­i­cal leader weighed in on the is­sue yes­ter­day.

Af­ter un­der­go­ing hours of in­ter­ro­ga­tion by ju­nior of­fi­cers af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed on Thurs­day, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er walked out of the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion a free woman on Sat­ur­day evening.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher and for­mer di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Ma­jor Roger Best were held last week for ques­tion­ing in re­la­tion to the pro­cure­ment of two high-pow­ered sniper ri­fles for the SSA.

At a news con­fer­ence in Curepe yes­ter­day, Ra­mad­har made it clear that the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er did not break any law which was why she had to be re­leased with­in the 48-hour time frame.

He said there seemed to be more in the mor­tar than the pes­tle. “A big ques­tion that I have, and I put this out to the Prime Min­is­ter and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty him­self, were they made aware in ad­vance that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice would have been ar­rest­ed? It would be shock­ing if these of­fice­hold­ers did not know this in ad­vance,” Ra­mad­har said.

“We need to know when they were in­formed of this po­ten­tial ar­rest and the even­tu­al ar­rest. If the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil head­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter had any in­put in the de­ci­sion to ar­rest the Com­mis­sion­er, this is a very small coun­try with a tremen­dous num­ber of con­spir­a­cies and all sorts of the­o­ries. So, we want clar­i­ty from them,” he stressed.

The COP po­lit­i­cal leader de­scribed what hap­pened over the past few days to the Com­mis­sion­er as an “atroc­i­ty to the Con­sti­tu­tion”. He said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the probe in­to the Com­mis­sion­er needs to take place.

“A Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er sat with her se­nior of­fi­cers and in­di­cat­ed that the Po­lice Ser­vice would con­tin­ue. I saw some­thing and I’m not quite clear if it is true, that she has said that the po­lice com­mis­sion­er is not to re­turn to ser­vice while there’s an ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­der­way. I want to know what in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­tin­u­ing af­ter all these many, many months. You just do not take as a pre­lim­i­nary step in your in­ves­ti­ga­tion an ar­rest,” Ra­mad­har said.

He al­so called the en­tire is­sue with the Com­mis­sion­er a dis­trac­tion to di­vert at­ten­tion away from the em­bat­tled Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass, who is ex­pect­ed to learn of the out­come of her law­suit against the Gov­ern­ment.

Mean­while, Se­nior Coun­sel Lar­ry Lal­la, in a Face­book post, said that Pamela El­der, SC’s, com­ments that Hare­wood-Christo­pher was de­tained as a sus­pect and in­ter­ro­gat­ed by her ju­niors when there was no ap­par­ent le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to do so, are cause for se­ri­ous con­cern.

“If what El­der is say­ing is cor­rect then it war­rants a full and speedy in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against the of­fi­cers in­volved if any are found to have abused their au­thor­i­ty and pow­er. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the fact that she could find her­self in this po­si­tion shows that her lead­er­ship skills leave much to be de­sired and that she should not have been put in the of­fice she holds. This in­ci­dent will do un­told dam­age to the morale of the TTPS and fur­ther un­der­mine what­ev­er pub­lic con­fi­dence there is in the TTPS.”