PNM sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds, one of the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Cheryl Miller, who was forcibly ad­mit­ted to the St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal, is con­fi­dent they would win the court mat­ter against the in­sti­tu­tion. Miller, an ac­counts clerk, was re­moved from her desk at the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment at Tow­er D, Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain, 16 days ago and de­tained at the hos­pi­tal.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred af­ter a con­fronta­tion with a se­nior em­ploy­ee. Miller was re­leased last Fri­day af­ter an emer­gency High Court sit­ting when Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram grant­ed her one week's leave from the hos­pi­tal. The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion has re­tained Hinds, Stan­ley Mar­cus, SC, and ju­nior at­tor­neys to fight the hos­pi­tal's de­ci­sion to de­tain her.

Hinds, on a ra­dio pro­gramme yes­ter­day, said lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the hos­pi­tal were seek­ing to use Sec­tion 15 of the Men­tal Health Act to jus­ti­fy the in­sti­tu­tion's ac­tion, but it does not fit. "It ap­pears there was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for what they have done...They il­le­gal­ly ap­pre­hend­ed our client," he said.

"I ex­pect they will try to jus­ti­fy that il­le­gal­i­ty. "I am con­fi­dent they would not be able to demon­strate the law­ful­ness of their con­duct." Asked whether he was chal­leng­ing the hos­pi­tal's di­ag­no­sis, Hinds said he re­ceived in­struc­tions from Miller's rel­a­tives to fo­cus on­ly on whether she was forcibly re­moved from her work­place and de­tained at the hos­pi­tal.

He said: "The po­si­tion is that noth­ing is wrong with our client. That is our in­struc­tion (from rel­a­tives). That is the line we are tak­ing." Hinds made ref­er­ences to cas­es in his­to­ry where peo­ple, usu­al­ly those op­pressed by po­lit­i­cal regimes, have been tak­en to con­cen­tra­tion camps and "giv­en all kinds of med­ica­tion to pun­ish them and make them mad."

He re­called the state of emer­gency de­clared by the Gov­ern­ment in Au­gust last year, stat­ing that 466 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and had to be re­leased by the court be­cause of a lack of ev­i­dence. He charged that it was a "gross abuse of pow­er" to re­move Miller from her work­place forcibly and de­tain her at St Ann's.

Hinds al­so crit­i­cised Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan for say­ing he was in­ves­ti­gat­ing how Miller was al­lowed to leave the hos­pi­tal. Khan, in a news­pa­per re­port yes­ter­day, in­di­cat­ed that he was do­ing his own re­search from both sides of the is­sue. He said peo­ple could be fired from a gov­ern­ment min­istry or the St Ann's hos­pi­tal if his in­ves­ti­ga­tions proved there was a breach in pro­to­col in ei­ther how Miller was ad­mit­ted to the hos­pi­tal or how she was re­leased.