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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Widow wins $.5M lawsuit over cop’s handling of dangerous driving case

by

Derek Achong
7 days ago
20250703

Over a decade af­ter her hus­band was killed in a car crash, which left her and her two young sons in­jured, a wid­ow from south Trinidad has won a land­mark law­suit over the po­lice’s han­dling of the case against the truck dri­ver, who caused the ac­ci­dent. 

High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran or­dered $500,000 com­pen­sa­tion for Mau­reen Dilchan-Ma­hara­jh as he up­held her con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on Tues­day. 

Dilchan-Ma­hara­jh’s hus­band, Ra­jku­mar, died on Au­gust 15, 2011, af­ter be­ing in­volved in a head-on col­li­sion with a truck in Man­zanil­la. 

Dilchan-Ma­haraj and the cou­ple’s two sons were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured in the crash but sur­vived. 

The truck dri­ver was even­tu­al­ly charged with caus­ing her hus­band’s death by dan­ger­ous dri­ving. 

In March 2017, the charge was dis­missed by a mag­is­trate af­ter Cpl Din­di­al Joseph, who served as po­lice com­plainant in the case, failed to at­tend ten hear­ings. 

Dilchan-Ma­hara­jh was not in­formed of the out­come and on­ly learned what tran­spired when she vis­it­ed the court to en­quire about the sta­tus of the case in late 2017.  

Dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings were brought against Cpl Joseph, but they were even­tu­al­ly dis­missed af­ter he pro­vid­ed a sick leave cer­tifi­cate ex­cus­ing him from work on the date of the hear­ing, in which the mag­is­trate de­cid­ed to dis­miss the case against the dri­ver. 

In 2023, Dilchan-Ma­hara­jh, through her lawyers led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, filed a nov­el law­suit claim­ing that her rights to pro­tec­tion of the law and pro­ce­dur­al mech­a­nisms to give ef­fect to her rights un­der sec­tions 4(b) and 5(2)(h) of the Con­sti­tu­tion were in­fringed by the out­comes of the crim­i­nal case and dis­ci­pli­nary charges. 

Their pur­suit of the case was de­layed as they were forced to bring nu­mer­ous ap­pli­ca­tions un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) for the dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion and doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and dis­ci­pli­nary case. 

In his judg­ment, sent via email, Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran on­ly up­held her claim about the crim­i­nal case. 

“He (Cpl Joseph) may have had a prop­er rea­son for his non-at­ten­dance on the oc­ca­sion that the mat­ter was dis­missed, but it was clear­ly that the un­ex­plained non-at­ten­dance over the course of the pro­ceed­ings that con­tributed to the dis­missal on that day,” Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran said. 

He al­so point­ed out that the of­fi­cer failed to serve a sum­mons on Dilchan-Ma­hara­jh for her to at­tend court to tes­ti­fy. 

“Had they been served on the wit­ness­es, it is pos­si­ble that the mat­ter would not have been dis­missed in the man­ner in which it was,” he said. 

He al­so found that there is no prop­er mech­a­nism to en­sure that po­lice of­fi­cers at­tend court hear­ings and pro­vide prop­er rea­sons for their ab­sence.

Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran ruled that her claim in re­la­tion to the dis­ci­pli­nary charges could not suc­ceed. He al­so re­ject­ed a pre­lim­i­nary ob­jec­tion from the State over whether she was en­ti­tled to pur­sue the case. 

“The Claimant was both a di­rect vic­tim of the al­leged crime as she was a pas­sen­ger in the ve­hi­cle when the ac­ci­dent oc­curred, and in­di­rect­ly, she is the wid­ow of the de­ceased,” he said. 

The judge or­dered $350,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages and $150,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages. He al­so or­dered the State to pay her le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the law­suit. 

‘Don’t sit down,

stand up for your rights’

In a brief but emo­tion­al in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Dilchan-Ma­hara­jh said that she was hap­py with the out­come af­ter en­dur­ing the trau­ma of the ac­ci­dent and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. 

“The po­lice, the State and the judge all failed me. They all failed my fam­i­ly. It will be 14 years since the in­ci­dent in Au­gust. It had been a night­mare,” she said. 

She not­ed that she and her younger son, whose 10th birth­day the fam­i­ly were on their way to cel­e­brate when the ac­ci­dent oc­curred, had nev­er ful­ly re­cov­ered from the in­juries they sus­tained. 

“It is re­al­ly ter­ri­ble. Every day it is an­oth­er in­jury act­ing up,” she said. 

She al­so not­ed that she has had a pho­bia of trav­el­ling in cars since the ac­ci­dent.

“My trau­ma is so bad I don’t like to be in a ve­hi­cle. The one of the on­ly places that I go is the hos­pi­tal,” she said. 

She said that de­spite the chal­lenges she and her sons faced, they were able to suc­ceed in their stud­ies, with her el­der son qual­i­fy­ing as a doc­tor and her younger son do­ing well in uni­ver­si­ty. 

“He (her hus­band) would be very proud. He al­ways want­ed our chil­dren to have a good ed­u­ca­tion,” she said. 

Dilchan-Ma­hara­jh ex­pressed hope that the case would in­spire oth­er vic­tims, who were left de­spon­dent due to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. 

“Even though it can’t bring back my hus­band and can’t take away the trau­ma we face in dai­ly life, it would help oth­er peo­ple. I am will­ing to go the mile to let peo­ple know, don’t sit down, stand up for your rights, and do what you have to do,” she said. 

Dilchan-Ma­hara­jh was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Kent Sam­lal, Jared Ja­groo, Natasha Bis­ram, and Jochelle Lootawan. 


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