As­sault charges against the CEO of A&V Oil and Gas Ltd CEO Hanif Naz­im Baksh and his son-in-law Cpl Bil­ly Ram­sun­dar were thrown out by a Siparia Mag­is­trate Court on Monday af­ter the State failed to present ev­i­dence against them some two years af­ter they were charged.

Baksh and Ram­sun­dar were charged in 2017 for as­sault­ing Guardian Me­dia’s se­nior pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kris­t­ian De Sil­va and ma­li­cious­ly dam­ag­ing his Canon DSLR cam­era on Sep­tem­ber 15.

At the time, De Sil­va was along Naz­im Av­enue, Pe­nal, cov­er­ing the “Fake Oil” sto­ry which led to Petrotrin ter­mi­nat­ing its mul­ti-mil­lion con­tract with A&V.

Baksh is the fa­ther of for­mer PNM sen­a­tor Allyson Baksh, who re­signed short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent. Ram­sun­dar is her hus­band.

In 2018, Baksh was again charged. This time it al­leged that on No­vem­ber 9, 2017, in Pe­nal, he know­ing­ly or rea­son­ably be­liev­ing Khu­sial Moti­ram was a po­ten­tial wit­ness in a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the as­sault of De Sil­va and the ma­li­cious dam­age of prop­er­ty be­long­ing to De Sil­va, for which Baksh was a sus­pect, he used threats to in­flu­ence Moti­ram to give false ev­i­dence and with­hold true ev­i­dence.

He was grant­ed $150,000 bail.

When the mat­ters were called be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Mar­garet Alert, at­tor­ney for Baksh and Ram­sun­dar ap­plied for the charges to be dis­missed and dis­charged on the grounds that the State was ap­ply­ing for yet an­oth­er ad­journ­ment.

It came af­ter the Court had giv­en the pros­e­cu­tion six months to pre­pare it­self for tri­al and had failed to com­ply. Baksh de­fence was led by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC and in­clud­ed for­mer Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har and for­mer EMA deputy di­rec­tor Michael Rooplal.

Ma­haraj said that each time the mat­ter was called over the last two years, the pros­e­cu­tion ap­plied for a post­pone­ment.

In re­cent hear­ings, lawyers for Baksh and Ram­sun­dar be­gan to ob­ject.

On Jan­u­ary 28 when an­oth­er ad­journ­ment was sought, the de­fence at­tor­neys asked for the mat­ter to be dis­missed, how­ev­er, the Court grant­ed the pros­e­cu­tion six months to be ready and fixed a tri­al date for yes­ter­day.

Ma­haraj said that when the mat­ter came up on Mon­day, the pros­e­cu­tion again sought an­oth­er ad­journ­ment, to which he ob­ject­ed and sub­mit­ted that suf­fi­cient time had been giv­en and that the pros­e­cu­tion was mak­ing a mock­ery of the or­ders of the court. He said Baksh and Ram­sun­dar had at­tend­ed every hear­ing over the last two years.

De Sil­va said on Mon­day that he was told that when the tri­al start­ed, he would be in­formed of when he need­ed to ap­pear in court. He said that three weeks ago, he spoke to in­ves­ti­ga­tors who re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion about the cost of his lens. He be­lieved that the case was con­tin­u­ing as usu­al.

He said that with so much time pass­ing since the as­sault, he felt numb.