The de­ci­sion to re­as­sign act­ing stenog­ra­ph­er Mindy Ra­moutar to an­oth­er de­part­ment in the Board of In­land Rev­enue was due to a staff short­age and not be­cause of the pres­ence of a “voodoo” arte­fact.

This was the ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by Com­mis­sion­er of In­land Rev­enue, De­o­mati Ram­dass, in her re­sponse to Ra­moutar’s pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter.

Through her at­tor­ney Ki­ran Pan­day, Ra­moutar sent the let­ter to Ram­dass on Feb­ru­ary 10, claim­ing that she was re­as­signed to the BIR’s Le­gal Unit af­ter be­ing ac­cused of prac­tis­ing “voodoo.”

Ra­moutar, who is al­so a Clerk Typ­ist I, said last Sep­tem­ber, her col­league gift­ed her a cul­tur­al arte­fact from New Or­leans af­ter re­turn­ing from va­ca­tion. She had placed the arte­fact on her work desk. Af­ter be­ing in­formed by the Hu­man Re­source De­part­ment (HR) on De­cem­ber 10, 2024, that she was be­ing re­as­signed, she said she in­quired from Ram­dass about the rea­son for her re­as­sign­ment and was al­leged­ly told that she was “in­volved in the prac­tice of voodoo” and shown a pho­to of the arte­fact.

In a let­ter dat­ed March 7, in re­sponse to Ra­moutar’s pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, Ram­dass said, “I wish to state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that al­though Ms Ra­moutar’s re­as­sign­ment to the Le­gal Unit and the pres­ence of the arte­fact were dis­cussed with her on 12th De­cem­ber 2024, they are in­deed two sep­a­rate and dis­tinct is­sues that have no bear­ing on each oth­er. For the avoid­ance of doubt, Ms Ra­moutar’s re­as­sign­ment oc­curred in re­la­tion to on­go­ing staffing needs in the Le­gal Unit, which is well-doc­u­ment­ed, and which was set in mo­tion pri­or to 10th De­cem­ber 2024. The pres­ence of the ‘arte­fact’ is an is­sue that on­ly came to my at­ten­tion on 12th De­cem­ber 2024 by a col­league a few min­utes be­fore Ms Ra­moutar en­tered my of­fice.”

How­ev­er, Ram­dass main­tained that her “per­son­al be­lief” that Ra­moutar was in­volved in the prac­tice of “voodoo” was log­i­cal, giv­en the ad­mis­sion that the arte­fact was a gift from a col­league who had re­turned from New Or­leans.

As is well known, she said, “voodoo is a mag­i­cal tra­di­tion that is deeply con­nect­ed with New Or­leans, as it was tak­en there by en­slaved Africans in the ear­ly 1700s.”

From the pho­to of the arte­fact at­tached to her let­ter, Ram­dass said across the tor­so of the “arte­fact” are clear­ly the words “ooDoo.” How­ev­er, she said the pic­ture omits to show, due to the van­tage point it was tak­en from, the ac­tu­al word—”VooDoo.”

Not­ing the un­can­ny re­sem­blance of the arte­fact to In­ter­net pic­tures of a “voodoo doll,” Ram­dass al­so con­tend­ed that the ap­pear­ance of the “arte­fact” co­in­cid­ed with Ra­moutar’s re­as­sign­ment, “which it is now ap­par­ent she was not pleased with.”

Ram­dass added that she was not giv­en an ex­pla­na­tion for the pres­ence of the arte­fact in the of­fice. She said Ra­moutar was re­as­signed to that de­part­ment be­cause she had a greater un­der­stand­ing of le­gal cor­re­spon­dence than her col­leagues and demon­strat­ed a su­pe­ri­or work eth­ic.

She added that Ra­moutar was not de­mot­ed, as she as­sumed du­ties in the Le­gal Unit as act­ing Clerk Stenog­ra­ph­er II, and there was no loss in ben­e­fits.

Deny­ing any an­i­mos­i­ty on her part, she said, “The un­found­ed al­le­ga­tion that Ms Ra­moutar is be­ing vic­timised based on the ‘arte­fact’ is to­tal­ly in­con­sis­tent with the clear chrono­log­i­cal time­line es­tab­lished by con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous doc­u­ments and events. I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­ny that Ms Ra­moutar was re­as­signed to the Le­gal Unit be­cause of the pres­ence of the arte­fact on 12th De­cem­ber 2024. I al­so af­firm that M. Ra­moutar has nei­ther, nor is she the sub­ject of vic­tim­i­sa­tion at the Board of In­land Rev­enue.”

Ram­dass in­di­cat­ed that she is open to re­con­sid­er­ing Ra­moutar’s re­as­sign­ment, pro­vid­ed that a suit­able re­place­ment could be iden­ti­fied.

She hoped no fur­ther ac­tion would be tak­en and the mat­ter “which has now be­come a pub­lic spec­ta­cle ow­ing to the wide­spread pub­lic­i­ty this mat­ter gained in the lo­cal me­dia,” re­solved am­i­ca­bly with­out re­course to the courts.