sto­ries by Derek Achong

The son of for­mer Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Sat­narayan Ma­haraj, has re­ceived con­di­tion­al leave to lodge a fi­nal ap­peal in his fa­ther’s le­gal chal­lenge against this coun­try’s colo­nial-aged sedi­tion leg­is­la­tion.

Ap­pel­late Judges Gre­go­ry Smith, Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar and Mal­colm Holdip grant­ed leave af­ter con­sid­er­ing his ap­pli­ca­tion dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day.

The ap­pli­ca­tion was not op­posed by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

In their mo­tion for leave to take the case be­fore the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Ma­haraj’s son Vi­jay, claimed that three Court of Ap­peal Judges got it wrong when they re­cent­ly over­turned a High Court Judge’s de­ci­sion to strike down as­pects of the leg­is­la­tion, which he ruled were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Ac­cord­ing to the court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Ma­haraj’s lawyers have iden­ti­fied al­most two dozen in­stances where they feel that the ap­peal pan­el erred in law in its de­ci­sion.

In their de­ci­sion, which is cur­rent­ly un­der chal­lenge, Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed, Char­maine Pem­ber­ton and Maria Wil­son ruled that High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad was wrong to up­hold Ma­haraj’s law­suit.

While Seep­er­sad ruled that seg­ments of the Sedi­tion Act were too vague and un­cer­tain to be con­sid­ered valid law, the judges dis­agreed.

“Some as­pects of the of­fence of sedi­tion, by their very na­ture, (un­like many oth­er crim­i­nal of­fences of which three ex­am­ples are mur­der, rape, and rob­bery), are not ca­pa­ble of a pre­cise de­f­i­n­i­tion. They are there­fore best de­scribed by a gen­er­al ref­er­ence to the na­ture of the ac­tiv­i­ties as op­posed to the meth­ods by which they can be com­mit­ted, since they can oc­cur in many var­ied cir­cum­stances,” the ap­peal pan­el said.

The pan­el sug­gest­ed that the gen­er­al­i­sa­tion in word­ing helped to en­sure that there was a lev­el of flex­i­bil­i­ty with chang­ing cir­cum­stances and so­ci­etal evo­lu­tion.

“Ac­tions which his­tor­i­cal­ly might have had a ten­den­cy to de­prave and cor­rupt or to shock and out­rage the feel­ings of the gen­er­al pub­lic or sec­tions of the pub­lic, would not nec­es­sar­i­ly have the same im­pact in con­tem­po­rary times,” they said.

The pan­el ruled that leg­is­la­tion was ex­empt from ju­di­cial in­ter­ven­tion, as it was le­git­i­mate­ly pro­tect­ed by the con­sti­tu­tion­al sav­ing clause, which pro­tects sim­i­lar pre-In­de­pen­dence leg­is­la­tion from re­view.

De­spite es­sen­tial­ly re­vers­ing Seep­er­sad’s de­ci­sion in the case, the ap­peal pan­el did rule that Seep­er­sad was cor­rect to al­low Ma­haraj’s son to con­tin­ue the case af­ter his fa­ther’s death in late 2019.

Ma­haraj filed the law­suit af­ter po­lice ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants on the SDMS’s me­dia house, Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (CB­SL), af­ter he made a se­ries of in­cen­di­ary state­ments on his Ma­ha Sab­ha Strikes Back pro­gramme on TV Jaagri­ti on April 15, 2019.

Ma­haraj claimed that cit­i­zens liv­ing in To­ba­go are lazy and la­belled the men as rapists.

While no crim­i­nal charges were even­tu­al­ly brought against him or CB­SL, he sug­gest­ed that such was in­evitable while ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers dur­ing SDMS In­di­an Ar­rival Day cel­e­bra­tions.

When the AG’s Of­fice brought the ap­peal, it suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied for a stay of the judge­ment pend­ing the out­come of the ap­peal.

Ap­pel­late Judge Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon ruled that the sus­pen­sion was nec­es­sary to pro­tect two pend­ing mat­ters be­ing pros­e­cut­ed by the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and to pre­vent a myr­i­ad of le­gal chal­lenges to oth­er ex­ist­ing laws.

Yorke-Soo Hon not­ed that if the judge­ment is suc­cess­ful­ly ap­pealed, the DPP’s Of­fice would not be able to re­lay the charges cur­rent­ly be­ing pros­e­cut­ed, as the leg­is­la­tion has a one-year lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od for do­ing so.

The sus­pen­sion of Seep­er­sad’s judge­ment meant that the DPP’s Of­fice could con­tin­ue the pros­e­cu­tion of its sedi­tion cas­es, in­clud­ing one against Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr.

While the de­ci­sion on the sus­pen­sion was still pend­ing, Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied to Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle to be dis­charged of the sedi­tion charge against him.

Ma­haraj’s son is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Jagdeo Singh, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Ste­fan Ramkissoon and Rhea Khan.