At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al–Rawi has de­scribed as pre­pos­ter­ous, scur­rilous and scan­dalous, the no­tion that Gov­ern­ment would en­ter­tain the idea of de­stroy­ing the Dar­ryl Smith re­port while it is the sub­ject of court pro­ceed­ings.

Al-Rawi was giv­en un­til 4 pm yes­ter­day to re­spond to con­cerns by De­vant Ma­haraj’s at­tor­ney Dr Che Din­di­al that the Dar­ryl Smith re­port could be de­stroyed even while Ma­haraj was try­ing to get its de­tails ex­posed through the court via a free­dom of in­for­ma­tion re­quest.

Al-Rawi re­spond­ed af­ter he point­ed out that the ur­gency was not nec­es­sary.

“There is no ba­sis for any be­lief that the Gov­ern­ment made a de­ci­sion that the re­port would be de­stroyed,” Al-Rawi said in the let­ter.

He added, “It is pre­pos­ter­ous to sug­gest that mere­ly be­cause a third par­ty has called for the re­port to be de­stroyed, the Gov­ern­ment will ac­cede to that re­quest.”

Ma­haraj re­spond­ed soon af­ter and asked if the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was be­ing sar­cas­tic when he said there was no ba­sis to be­lieve the Gov­ern­ment had de­cid­ed to de­stroy the re­port. Ma­haraj said re­cent events give rise to gen­uine pub­lic con­cern about the mo­tives of the gov­ern­ment in this mat­ter.

Ma­haraj said how the mat­ter un­fold­ed from the first al­le­ga­tion of sex­u­al mis­con­duct on May 3, 2016 to now, cou­ple with the pub­lic dis­qui­et are what mo­ti­vat­ed him to seek ju­di­cial re­view of the de­ci­sion to de­ny ac­cess to the re­port.

How­ev­er, he did say he is pleased that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has en­sured the re­port’s safe­ty for now.

Mean­while, at­tor­ney Christo­pher Sieuc­hand point­ed Guardian Me­dia to Sec­tion 42(1) of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act which states “A pub­lic au­thor­i­ty shall main­tain and pre­serve records in re­la­tion to its func­tions and a copy of all of­fi­cial doc­u­ments which are cre­at­ed by it or which come at any time in­to its pos­ses­sion, cus­tody or pow­er.”

He sug­gest­ed that the Dar­ryl Smith re­port can be con­sid­ered an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment.

“I think it will be very dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy the Dar­ryl Smith re­port as not an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment,” he said, adding, “I think there’s a strong like­li­hood that it will fall with­in that de­scrip­tion, if it does then sec­tion 42(1) ap­plies and the pub­lic au­thor­i­ty has the du­ty to pre­serve that doc­u­ment.”

Sec­tion 42(2) of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act states that a per­son who de­stroys a doc­u­ment re­quired to be pre­served un­der sub­sec­tion 1 is li­able to a fine of $5,000 and im­pris­on­ment for six months.