Derek Achong

A mo­tor ve­hi­cle in­spec­tor with the Trans­port Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port will have to wait four months to learn the fate of his law­suit over be­ing com­mit­ted to stand tri­al on two charges over an al­leged scheme of trans­fer of a stolen ve­hi­cle.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad promised to give his judg­ment in Valmi­ki Ram­jat­tan’s ju­di­cial re­view law­suit by Ju­ly 27 af­ter set­ting dead­lines for fil­ing writ­ten sub­mis­sions dur­ing a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case in late 2019, Ram­jat­tan, Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, and two of his col­leagues from the di­vi­sion were charged along­side three civil­ians for the scheme.

Ram­jat­tan was charged with con­spir­ing with his co-ac­cused to de­fraud the di­vi­sion and with mis­be­hav­ing in pub­lic of­fice.

Af­ter pros­e­cu­tors closed their case against the group dur­ing a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry be­fore Mag­is­trate Adia Mo­hammed in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate’s Court in No­vem­ber, last year, Ram­jat­tan’s lawyers pre­sent­ed a no-case sub­mis­sion, in which they claimed that there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence link­ing him to the crimes.

Mag­is­trate Mo­hammed even­tu­al­ly dis­missed the ap­pli­ca­tion and com­mit­ted Ram­jat­tan to stand tri­al for the charges.

In the le­gal chal­lenge be­fore Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, Ram­jat­tan is con­tend­ing that pros­e­cu­tors did not prove the es­sen­tial el­e­ments of the con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud of­fence as there was no ev­i­dence that he (Ram­jat­tan) was part of an ex­press agree­ment to de­fraud or com­mit­ted any crim­i­nal acts.

“In the case of the Ap­pli­cant, the on­ly al­leged crim­i­nal act com­mit­ted by him was that he signed the said form, sig­ni­fy­ing that he had ver­i­fied the Chas­sis Num­ber on the said ve­hi­cle,” his lawyers said.

“More­over, the al­leged act—that the Ap­pli­cant signed ver­i­fy­ing the Chas­sis Num­ber of the said ve­hi­cle—is not a crim­i­nal act,” they added.

They made sim­i­lar claims in re­la­tion to the oth­er charge.

“While the Ap­pli­cant is a pub­lic of­fi­cer, there was no ev­i­dence be­fore the Re­spon­dent to sug­gest that he ne­glect­ed to per­form a du­ty or mis­con­duct­ed him­self,” they said.

They claimed that Mag­is­trate Mo­hammed act­ed ir­ra­tional­ly and con­trary to the ev­i­dence be­fore her when she ruled that he was part of the con­spir­a­cy and ben­e­fit­ed fi­nan­cial­ly.

Through the law­suit, Ram­jat­tan is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over Mag­is­trate Mo­hammed’s de­ci­sion and an or­der quash­ing it.

Ram­jat­tan was rep­re­sent­ed by Michael Rooplal, Kristy Mo­han, Vishar Gir­war, and Gisanne Ramjit, while Ra­jiv Per­sad rep­re­sent­ed Mag­is­trate Mo­hammed.