NEWS DESK

The le­gal dis­pute be­tween sus­pend­ed act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) took an un­ex­pect­ed turn yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, with the par­ties re­port­ed­ly com­ing to a set­tle­ment. 

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that the le­gal teams for both par­ties were locked in ne­go­ti­a­tions over the fin­er de­tails of the agree­ment up to late yes­ter­day. 

How­ev­er, le­gal sources said that as part of the set­tle­ment, the sus­pen­sion against Grif­fith, is­sued by the com­mis­sion last Fri­day, will be lift­ed and Grif­fith will with­draw his on­go­ing law­suit over the de­ci­sion. 

De­spite this, le­gal sources said that Grif­fith’s re­turn to the post will be short-lived, as he has agreed to re­sign in or­der to cor­rect a le­gal er­ror com­mit­ted by the com­mis­sion when it grant­ed him the act­ing ap­point­ment af­ter his three-year stint in the post end­ed in mid-Au­gust.

The com­mis­sion will then pos­si­bly use the cor­rect process un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion to put for­ward Grif­fith to be reap­point­ed as act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er, which in­cludes the re­quire­ment of par­lia­men­tary ap­proval. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that that pro­ce­dure may ren­der so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion law­suit, over the wrong process be­ing used by the PSC to grant Grif­fith the act­ing ap­point­ment in the first place, aca­d­e­m­ic. 

The de­vel­op­ment re­port­ed­ly came hours af­ter High Court Judges Na­dia Kan­ga­loo and Ricky Rahim agreed that one judge (Kan­ga­loo) should hear both cas­es over the is­sue. 

Even if the set­tle­ment is rat­i­fied and Par­lia­ment even­tu­al­ly ap­proves Grif­fith be­ing grant­ed the act­ing ap­point­ment, the com­mis­sion is still barred from com­plet­ing the re­cruit­ment process for the sub­stan­tive post by an in­junc­tion ob­tained by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Anand Rame­sar, who is chal­leng­ing the PSC’s de­ci­sion to not progress him to the in­ter­view stage of the process.

Rame­sar’s in­junc­tion stays in place un­til Oc­to­ber 24, when High Court Judge Joan Charles will de­cide whether to lift it or ex­tend it pend­ing her de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case.