So­cial and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj has won his law­suit against the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) over the dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to its wire-tap­ping ac­tiv­i­ties.

De­liv­er­ing a 26-page judge­ment elec­tron­i­cal­ly on Thurs­day, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad ruled that the SSA in­cor­rect­ly re­fused Ma­haraj’s re­quest, made un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act in March 2017. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed in the case,  Ma­haraj sought the in­for­ma­tion as he was al­leged­ly con­cerned over whether the SSA’s pow­er of in­ter­cep­tion was be­ing prop­er­ly utilised and want­ed to high­light po­ten­tial de­fi­cien­cies and make pro­pos­als for im­prove­ment. 

Ma­haraj was seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on the num­ber of in­ter­cep­tions per­formed with­out ju­di­cial war­rants be­tween 2015 and 2016, the agency’s fi­nan­cial records for that pe­ri­od and the num­ber of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences at­tend­ed by SSA per­son­nel, as re­quired un­der the SSA Act. 

The SSA re­fused the re­quest and sought to have Ram­per­sad strike out the law­suit soon af­ter it was filed by Ma­haraj. The ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed by Ram­per­sad and up­held by the Court of Ap­peal.

In his judge­ment, Ram­per­sad re­ject­ed the SSA’s claim that the dis­clo­sure of the num­ber of in­ter­cep­tions was not re­quired as it would im­prop­er­ly re­veal the agency’s ca­pac­i­ty to per­form such in­ter­cep­tions, un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act. 

Not­ing that the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion was four-years-old, Ram­per­sad said: “There seems to be no sub­stan­tive ba­sis to jus­ti­fy such an ex­emp­tion and hav­ing failed in its bur­den of proof in that re­gard, there is no rea­son why the in­for­ma­tion ought not to be pro­vid­ed.” 

In terms of the in­for­ma­tion about re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences at­tend­ed by SSA per­son­nel, Ram­per­sad al­so ruled that it should have been dis­closed as it would not re­veal the con­tent of the meet­ings or com­pro­mise in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, as con­tend­ed by the SSA. 

“The court is of the re­spect­ful view that the re­fusal seems rather un­rea­son­able and the blan­ket re­fusal of this re­quest for the rea­son giv­en seems to be some sort of tem­plate re­sponse rather than a gen­uine con­sid­er­a­tion of ex­act­ly what was re­quest­ed,” Ram­per­sad said. 

Ram­per­sad re­ject­ed Ma­haraj’s re­quest for the fi­nan­cial state­ments, as he not­ed that they were yet to be au­dit­ed by the Au­di­tor-Gen­er­al and would be dis­closed once com­plet­ed and laid in Par­lia­ment. 

While Ram­per­sad or­dered the dis­clo­sure of most of the in­for­ma­tion sought by Ma­haraj, he re­fused to grant a de­c­la­ra­tion that the SSA act­ed il­le­gal­ly in re­fus­ing his re­quest, as he (Ram­per­sad) stat­ed that such re­lief was not re­quired. 

As part of his de­ci­sion, Ram­per­sad or­dered the State to pay Ma­haraj’s le­gal costs for bring­ing the law­suit. 

Ma­haraj was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Ger­ald Ramdeen, Dou­glas Bay­ley and Vishaal Siewsaran. Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Ran­dall Hec­tor, and Di­ane Kat­wa­roo rep­re­sent­ed the SSA.