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Wednesday, May 7, 2025

$20m judgment in Vindra Naipul-Coolman case set aside

by

Dereck Achong
518 days ago
20231206
Vindra Naipaul-Coolman

Vindra Naipaul-Coolman

A High Court Judge has agreed to set aside a $20 mil­lion de­fault judg­ment award­ed to nine men for­mer­ly ac­cused of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man.

In a de­ci­sion de­liv­ered this morn­ing, Jus­tice Joan Charles up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to set aside the de­fault judg­ment, which was grant­ed by her in Jan­u­ary 2021, and the sub­se­quent as­sess­ment of dam­ages for the men that was com­plet­ed in Jan­u­ary, this year.

The out­come was an­nounced by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, in a press re­lease is­sued a short while ago.

He not­ed that Jus­tice Charles ruled that his of­fice had not been prop­er­ly served with the sub­stan­tive case which was filed in May 2020.

“As a con­se­quence, all sub­se­quent pro­ceed­ings, in­clud­ing the award of dam­ages, have been set aside,” he said.

The de­ci­sion means that the case will now have to go to tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Charles.

Speak­ing to me­dia per­son­nel af­ter ini­ti­at­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the case in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, Ar­mour claimed that pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the case file “dis­ap­peared” af­ter be­ing served on his min­istry.

Ar­mour said, “I would not al­low my­self at this time, be­cause of due process, to ut­ter what I think oc­curred but it is sin­is­ter.”

Af­ter the in­ves­ti­ga­tion team of re­tired Judge Stan­ley John and re­tired As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Pamela Schullera-Hinds com­menced their probe, the file was re­port­ed­ly “re­turned” to the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice and hand­ed over.

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