A High Court Judge has re­fused to lift two in­junc­tions bar­ring the trans­fer of a  pair of Mus­lim prison of­fi­cers, who have mount­ed a le­gal chal­lenge over a pol­i­cy bar­ring them and their col­leagues, who share their faith, from hav­ing beards. 

In Feb­ru­ary, Sher­win Ram­nar­ine and Javed Boodram filed law­suits al­leg­ing that the pol­i­cy breached their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of con­science and re­li­gious be­lief and ob­ser­vance. 

Sub­se­quent­ly, High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed grant­ed in­junc­tions bar­ring the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er from trans­fer­ring the duo from the prison fa­cil­i­ties they were as­signed pend­ing the out­come of their sub­stan­tive case over the pol­i­cy. 

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, Jus­tice Mo­hammed dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to set aside the in­junc­tions. 

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, State at­tor­neys con­tend­ed that the in­junc­tions were un­nec­es­sary as the duo’s pur­port­ed trans­fers were not re­lat­ed to their case over the pol­i­cy. They al­so claimed that they (the in­junc­tions) af­fect­ed the prop­er and ef­fi­cient func­tion­ing of the T&T Prison Ser­vice.

In her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Mo­hammed ruled that the duo had raised se­ri­ous is­sues to be de­ter­mined at tri­al and can­not be com­pen­sat­ed with dam­ages if they are even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful. 

“Even if they are award­ed dam­ages it would not be ad­e­quate to com­pen­sate the claimants for such a se­ri­ous breach,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said. 

In con­sid­er­ing the trans­fers, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that it was done af­ter the duo threat­ened le­gal ac­tion. 

“In the ab­sence of any ev­i­dence that the claimants had some spe­cial skills which were ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary for the prop­er func­tion­ing of the Port-of-Spain State Prison, it seems to me that their trans­fer was pun­ish­ment by the com­mis­sion­er for them pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion in cir­cum­stances where there were no dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings,” she said. 

While she recog­nised that the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er has the pow­er to trans­fer prison of­fi­cers to meet the op­er­a­tional needs of the Prison Ser­vice, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that what tran­spired in the duo’s case was il­le­gal as the trans­fer pro­ce­dure un­der the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) Reg­u­la­tions were not fol­lowed. 

She al­so re­ject­ed claims that the in­junc­tions would lead to oth­er of­fi­cers tak­ing sim­i­lar le­gal ac­tion as she not­ed that they (the in­junc­tions) were based on the unique cir­cum­stances of Boodram and Ram­nar­ine’s cas­es. 

Ac­cord­ing to their court fil­ings, Ram­nar­ine joined the Prison Ser­vice in 2002, while Boodram joined in 2014. Boodram was al­ready a Mus­lim when he joined the ser­vice, while Ram­nar­ine con­vert­ed af­ter join­ing. 

Both men claimed that they were con­stant­ly ha­rassed by se­nior of­fi­cers, who re­peat­ed­ly ad­vised them to shave their beards that they keep as part of their re­li­gious be­liefs. 

Ad­mit­ting that prison of­fi­cers are on­ly ex­empt from the fa­cial hair pol­i­cy based on an­nu­al med­icals, Boodram ad­mit­ted that he got one from a der­ma­tol­o­gist as he has a skin con­di­tion un­der which he de­vel­ops painful cysts on his face when he is clean-shaved. 

How­ev­er, Boodram’s lawyers claimed that the ex­emp­tion on­ly al­lowed him to grow a low beard as op­posed to the length pre­scribed in his re­li­gion. 

While Ram­nar­ine, who has an as­so­ciate de­gree in Is­lam­ic Stud­ies, claimed that he was aware of Mus­lim col­leagues seek­ing to utilise the ex­emp­tion to side­step the pol­i­cy, he chose to avoid such ac­tion. 

Ram­nar­ine claimed that he had re­quest­ed a se­nior Mus­lim of­fi­cer to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions to amend the pol­i­cy but he re­fused and al­so de­clined to de­liv­er a let­ter from Ram­nar­ine on the is­sue. 

Both Boodram and Ram­nar­ine claimed that they were threat­ened with dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion for re­peat­ed­ly fail­ing to com­ply with re­quests to shave their beards and filed the law­suits as a re­sult. 

Boodram claimed that he could no longer rep­re­sent the Prison Ser­vice Crick­et Team. 

Through the law­suit, the of­fi­cers are seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the pol­i­cy and com­pen­sa­tion for breach­es of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. 

At­tached to their cas­es was an af­fi­davit from Darul Uloom In­sti­tute Chair­man and Prin­ci­pal Waz­im Khan, who sought to ex­plain the sig­nif­i­cance of a beard to Mus­lim men. 

“There is no doubt, there­fore, that the con­sen­sus among all ju­rists and Is­lam­ic schol­ars from past to present is that wear­ing a beard is es­sen­tial for a Mus­lim male, and shav­ing it is sin­ful,” Khan said. 

Ram­nar­ine and Boodram are rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Kent Sam­lal, Natasha Bis­ram and Shel­don Sookram. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Coreen Find­ley, Janique Mitchell, Van­dana Ra­mad­har, Nisa Sim­mons, Akee­nie Mur­ray and Domonique Bernard.