The Court of Ap­peal has over­turned a judge's de­ci­sion to strike down as­pects of this coun­try's colo­nial-age sedi­tion leg­is­la­tion. 

De­liv­er­ing a writ­ten judge­ment dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing, a short while ago, Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed, Char­maine Pem­ber­ton, and Maria Wil­son ruled that High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad got it wrong when he up­held the case brought by for­mer Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Sat­narayan Ma­haraj, be­fore his death in No­vem­ber 2019.

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

Mo­hammed sug­gest­ed that the leg­is­la­tion had met the ob­jec­tives to be a valid law and was not vague and sub­jec­tive as claimed by the Ma­haraj. 

He al­so not­ed that the leg­is­la­tion con­tained safe­guards against ar­bi­trary ap­pli­ca­tion in­clud­ing a re­quire­ment that the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) ini­ti­ate pros­e­cu­tions un­der it. 

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

How­ev­er, the ap­peal pan­el did rule that Seep­er­sad was cor­rect to al­low Ma­haraj's son Vi­jay to con­tin­ue the case af­ter his fa­ther's death. 

Fol­low­ing the rul­ing, at­tor­ney Vanes­sa Gopaul, who was part of the le­gal team for the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, asked that Ma­haraj's son pay its le­gal costs as her client was suc­cess­ful in the ap­peal.

"This is a case that ought not to be pur­sued from the on­set," Gopaul said. 

Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who led Ma­haraj's le­gal team, chal­lenged the po­si­tion as he re­vealed that his client in­tends to ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil. 

"We do not think this case ought not to be pur­sued and it would be pur­sued fur­ther," Ma­haraj said. 

Gopaul chal­lenged the sug­ges­tion as she claimed that a fi­nal ap­peal could be pur­sued as nei­ther Ma­haraj nor the SDMS is af­fect­ed by the leg­is­la­tion as it con­tains a one-year lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od on pros­e­cu­tions. 

The pan­el even­tu­al­ly agreed to make each par­ty bear its le­gal costs for the ap­peal. 

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.

Ma­haraj's son is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Ste­fan Ramkissoon, and Rhea Khan. The AG's Of­fice was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Fyard Ho­sein, SC, and Josephi­na Bap­tiste-Mo­hammed.