A&V Oil and Gas Ltd CEO Han­iff Naz­im Baksh and his son-in-law Sgt Bil­ly Ram­sun­dar are pre­pared to file for ju­di­cial re­view if the State is al­lowed to pros­e­cute them for an al­leged as­sault on Guardian Me­dia se­nior pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kris­t­ian De Sil­va.

Baksh, whose com­pa­ny is em­broiled in the mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar “Fake Oil” scan­dal with Petrotrin, and Ram­sun­dar ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Wendy Dougdeen-Bal­ly in the Siparia Mag­is­trates’ Court yes­ter­day.

Baksh’s le­gal team led by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC and Ram­sun­dar’s at­tor­ney Jagdeo Singh told the court of their in­tent to make sub­mis­sions show­ing that the re­lay­ing of the charges, which were dis­missed last Ju­ly, was an abuse of process.

Baksh, who is the fa­ther of for­mer PNM Sen­a­tor Allyson Baksh, was charged on No­vem­ber 10, 2017, with as­sault­ing Guardian Me­dia’s se­nior pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kris­t­ian De Sil­va, oc­ca­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm and un­law­ful­ly and ma­li­cious­ly dam­ag­ing De Sil­va’s eye­glass­es val­ued at $2,400.

Ram­sun­dar, a po­lice of­fi­cer with 27 years ser­vice, was charged with as­sault­ing De Sil­va and oc­ca­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm and dam­ag­ing his Canon DSLR cam­era val­ued at US$1,600. 

On March 12, 2018, Baksh was again tak­en to court, this time for al­leged­ly is­su­ing threats to in­flu­ence Khu­sial Moti­ram, who was a po­ten­tial wit­ness in a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the as­sault of De Sil­va, to give false ev­i­dence and with­hold true ev­i­dence. 

More than 18 months had passed by and the pros­e­cu­tion had failed to ready it­self for the mat­ter, seek­ing sev­er­al ad­journ­ments. Last Jan­u­ary, Se­nior Mag­is­trate Mar­garet Alert up­held a sub­mis­sion by the de­fence that the State had failed to present a case and dis­missed the mat­ter. 

Amidst pub­lic crit­i­cism, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion Roger Gas­pard an­nounced that po­lice would re­lay the charges. But the charges were not read to the ac­cused yes­ter­day, in­stead, Ma­haraj raised a pre­lim­i­nary ob­jec­tion, say­ing that the re­lay­ing of the charges con­sti­tut­ed an un­fair ma­nip­u­la­tion of the pros­e­cu­tion process. He cit­ed two Eng­lish cas­es, which prin­ci­ples were used in T&T.

Dougdeen-Bal­ly in­di­cat­ed that she was on­ly sit­ting in the court for a short stint. The sub­stan­tial se­nior mag­is­trate is ex­pect­ed to re­turn lat­er this month.

The pros­e­cu­tion, led by Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal, asked that the de­fence’s sub­mis­sion be made in writ­ing in the in­ter­est of time. Baksh’s de­fence team, which in­cludes for­mer Con­gress of the Peo­ple po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har and for­mer EMA deputy chair­man Michael Rooplal, is ex­pect­ed to file their writ­ten sub­mis­sion with all au­thor­i­ties with­in sev­en days. The pros­e­cu­tion agreed to file their re­sponse with­in sev­en days with all au­thor­i­ties, giv­ing a fur­ther sev­en days for the de­fence to an­swer. The mat­ter was ad­journed to Oc­to­ber 3. 

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side the court, Ma­haraj said that while the re­lay­ing of charges has oc­curred be­fore, it is was not un­usu­al for a de­fence to claim an abuse of process. He said there are sev­er­al cas­es be­fore the Supreme Court and Court of Ap­peal, which he will re­fer the mag­is­trate to in his sub­mis­sions. This will be done to es­tab­lish the prin­ci­ple that where the pros­e­cu­tion was giv­en am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty to prove a case and af­ter two years have failed, the State can­not re­file the mat­ter.

“If the Mag­is­trate does not de­cide in our favour, we are en­ti­tled to go for ju­di­cial re­view. There was a case in Cou­va. The name of the case is Alvin Ay­hew. The gen­tle­men were charged for pos­ses­sion of firearm and am­mu­ni­tion and the mag­is­trate re­fused to ac­cept my sub­mis­sion that the pros­e­cu­tion was an abuse of process and we went for ju­di­cial re­view. The judge ruled that the pros­e­cu­tion was an abuse of process and de­clared,” Ma­haraj said. 

The se­nior coun­sel added, “This is ju­di­cial re­view and they have a right to ap­peal to the Court of Ap­peal and the ju­di­cial com­mit­tee of the privy coun­cil.”

Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad, who was sat in on the hear­ing, said the ex­ec­u­tive will be look­ing at the case with great in­ter­est. Ram­per­sad said that giv­en Ma­haraj’s dis­clo­sure, it ap­pears that there are con­se­quences to the case be­ing pre­vi­ous­ly dis­missed and was not a sim­ple mat­ter.