RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As a spate of court cas­es con­tin­ue to col­lapse, le­gal ex­perts are rais­ing alarm over what they de­scribe as sys­temic fail­ures in the na­tion’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The re­cent dis­missal of high-pro­file mat­ters, in­clud­ing the long-run­ning 100-count fraud case against for­mer trav­el agent Vicky Boodram, has reignit­ed calls for ur­gent re­forms.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, for­mer min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Prakash Ra­mad­har called the col­lapse of cas­es “a shame and an em­bar­rass­ment to our ju­di­cial sys­tem and our pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al arm of the state.” He warned that the re­peat­ed fail­ures of the State to pre­pare and present cas­es ad­e­quate­ly not on­ly erode pub­lic con­fi­dence but al­so em­bold­en those with crim­i­nal in­tent.

“Peo­ple get a sense of com­fort that, at the end of the day, the like­li­hood of con­vic­tion is low,” Ra­mad­har said. “We need to fix these things.”

Ra­mad­har high­light­ed pro­ce­dur­al laps­es, in­clud­ing poor­ly pre­pared state­ments and re­peat­ed ad­journ­ments, which of­ten leave courts with no op­tion but to dis­miss cas­es.

“Vicky Boodram has spent many years in cus­tody. To have heard that af­ter mul­ti­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties for the pros­e­cu­tion to put their house in or­der, the mat­ter is thrown out—while good news for some—is cer­tain­ly not healthy to have peo­ple strung along. The un­cer­tain­ty and trau­ma en­dured by ac­cused per­sons and their fam­i­lies are im­mense.”

Ra­mad­har al­so crit­i­cised the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of weak cas­es over mat­ters with stronger ev­i­dence.

“If there is a very weak case, make a bold de­ci­sion. Fo­cus on the very se­ri­ous cas­es where you have shown ev­i­dence that is very like­ly to lead to con­vic­tions,” he said, urg­ing the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to adopt a more strate­gic, ev­i­dence-based ap­proach.

The col­lapse of cas­es has prompt­ed sharp re­bukes from the Ju­di­cia­ry.

In a scathing Sep­tem­ber 22, 2025 judg­ment, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad con­demned the DPP, stat­ing that the of­fice had “failed, re­fused, and/or ne­glect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­ceed­ings be­fore this court. The be­hav­iour dis­played is un­ac­cept­able and on­ly serves to un­der­mine pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in an of­fice which plays a piv­otal role in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.”

The case arose af­ter Make­si Fe­lix, ar­rest­ed in 2016 for the mur­der of his neigh­bour, en­dured near­ly four years in pre-tri­al de­ten­tion be­fore be­ing ac­quit­ted in Sep­tem­ber 2024. Fe­lix sought trans­paren­cy by fil­ing a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest, un­der­scor­ing the lin­ger­ing frus­tra­tions over pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al laps­es.

Mean­while, at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram, who wit­nessed two of his cas­es col­lapse this year, ex­plained the le­gal mech­a­nisms be­hind such dis­missals. He said the in­tro­duc­tion of new Crim­i­nal Pro­ceed­ings Rules and the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings Act at the end of 2023 im­posed strict time­lines for both pros­e­cu­tion and de­fence to com­ply with court di­rec­tions.

“The prac­ti­cal ef­fect for the pros­e­cu­tion is that they must ei­ther pros­e­cute a mat­ter dili­gent­ly or have the mat­ter dis­missed,” Rati­ram said.

“This re­al­ly was a much-need­ed change to the way we pre­vi­ous­ly did busi­ness, where the grant­i­ng of ad­journ­ments and ex­ten­sions for com­pli­ance was com­mon­place.  

“The sad re­al­i­ty, how­ev­er, is that some­times, vic­tims of crimes, who have noth­ing to do with the mat­ter be­ing dis­missed for want of pros­e­cu­tion, are the ones who will pay the price, by not get­ting re­dress for the wrongs that have been com­mit­ted against them.”

He ex­pressed hope that the re­cent spate of dis­missals will lead pros­e­cu­tors to ad­here to dead­lines for com­pli­ance so that mat­ters will be dealt with on their mer­its.