The Of­fices of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al are yet to re­spond to a vic­tim­i­sa­tion law­suit brought by a re­tired As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) in March. 

The is­sue of both of­fices' de­lay in reg­is­ter­ing an ap­pear­ance in re­tired ACP To­taram Dookhie's case was raised as it (the case) came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice West­min James, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

Dookhie's lawyer Ger­ald Ramdeen in­di­cat­ed that al­though the law­suit and as­so­ci­at­ed court doc­u­ments were served on the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al and Chief State So­lic­i­tor's De­part­ments of the AG's Of­fice, there was no ac­knowl­edge­ment of ser­vice and no rep­re­sen­ta­tion dur­ing the sched­uled hear­ing. 

"It is a very un­sat­is­fac­to­ry state of af­fairs, be­cause the al­le­ga­tions that form the ba­sis of this claim, they're very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions made against a se­ri­ous pub­lic of­fi­cial, and one would ex­pect that good ad­min­is­tra­tion will dic­tate that the court is pre­sent­ed with some­one who is com­ing here to de­fend these al­le­ga­tions," Ramdeen said. 

"It's been four months," he added. 

Jus­tice James agreed with Ramdeen's com­plaint but still agreed to grant a short ad­journ­ment to give the de­fen­dants time to rec­ti­fy the is­sue. 

He di­rect­ed Ramdeen to in­form the de­fen­dants of the ad­journ­ment date of Ju­ly 9 by June 24. 

Dookhie served in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for over 41 years be­fore he re­tired in 2021. 

Dookhie, the for­mer head of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB), which probes crim­i­nal al­le­ga­tions made against po­lice of­fi­cers, claimed that he faced re­sis­tance while in­ves­ti­gat­ing firearm li­cens­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and cor­rup­tion in 2019. 

He claimed that short­ly af­ter mak­ing com­plaints, he was sent on six months' leave. 

He claimed that when he re­turned to work in ear­ly 2020 to meet a court dead­line in a cor­rup­tion case against for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, he was blocked from ac­cess­ing his of­fice and was re­as­signed to an ob­scure post with­out staff and re­sources. 

In March 2020, Dookhie was ar­rest­ed and slapped with kid­nap­ping and false im­pris­on­ment charges. 

The charges were even­tu­al­ly dis­missed. 

In his law­suit, Dookhie claimed that he was de­nied pro­mo­tion and was forced out of be­ing al­lowed to act as Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) based on un­found­ed ac­cu­sa­tions. 

He claimed that he was promised to lead a new spe­cialised unit to ad­dress white-col­lar crime but the post was giv­en to an­oth­er ACP with­out any no­tice or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. 

He al­so al­leged that he was barred from com­plet­ing sev­er­al high-pro­file in­ves­ti­ga­tions that were ini­ti­at­ed un­der his tenure. 

Dookhie is seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion in his law­suit as he claims that he and his fam­i­ly suf­fered hu­mil­i­a­tion and emo­tion­al dis­tress over what tran­spired. 

"I gave my life to build­ing an in­sti­tu­tion on­ly to be forced out in shame and dis­grace be­cause I chose to re­main true and faith­ful to my oath," Dookhie said, in his court fil­ings. 

Dookhie is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ka­ri­na Singh, Vashisht Seep­er­sad, and An­gel Jag­ger­nath.