The son of for­mer Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Sat­narayan Ma­haraj has lost his fi­nal ap­peal in his late fa­ther's le­gal chal­lenge against this coun­try's colo­nial-age sedi­tion leg­is­la­tion.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment a short while ago, five Law Lords of the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil dis­missed an ap­peal from Ma­haraj's son Vi­jay, who was al­lowed to con­tin­ue the case af­ter his fa­ther's pass­ing in late 2019.

In the ap­peal, Ma­haraj's son claimed that three Court of Ap­peal Judges got it wrong in 2021 when they over­turned High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad's de­ci­sion to strike down as­pects of the leg­is­la­tion, which he ruled were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

The Privy Coun­cil agreed with the Court of Ap­peal that the leg­is­la­tion is con­sis­tent with the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Ma­haraj filed the law­suit af­ter po­lice ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants on the SDMS's me­dia house Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (CB­SL) af­ter he made a se­ries of in­cen­di­ary state­ments on his Ma­ha Sab­ha Strikes Back pro­gramme on TV Jaagri­ti on April 15, 2019.

Ma­haraj claimed that cit­i­zens liv­ing in To­ba­go are lazy and la­belled the men as rapists.

While no crim­i­nal charges were even­tu­al­ly brought against him or CB­SL, he sug­gest­ed that such was in­evitable while ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers dur­ing SDMS In­di­an Ar­rival Day cel­e­bra­tions that year.

The State's le­gal team was led by Fyard Ho­sein, SC, and Rishi Dass, SC.

Ma­haraj's son was rep­re­sent­ed by Pe­ter Knox, KC, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Jagdeo Singh, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Ste­fan Ramkissoon, and Rhea Khan.