To­day marks five years since Dana See­ta­hal SC was as­sas­si­nat­ed in Wood­brook.

In a trib­ute of her work, Jus­tice Gillian Lucky spoke of the new mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed by the Ju­di­cia­ry “re­sult­ing in faster pro­ce­dures” in the crim­i­nal jus­tice are­na.

“Dana it’s five years now that you were killed and yes there is a back­log still,

But great news Dana, your light was seen,

And a new plea bar­gain­ing law be­gan in 2019,” Lucky said.

A small group at­tend­ed the event — A Nec­es­sary Voice- read­ings from the columns 1997-2014. It was or­gan­ised by Friends of Mr Biswas, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with NALIS and See­ta­hals’ fam­i­ly, held a memo­r­i­al at the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s of­fice on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain.

Lucky al­so spoke about “many tools” put in place by the Chief Jus­tice such as the Max­i­mum Sen­tence In­di­ca­tions and Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules to speed up the de­liv­ery of jus­tice in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

“I know that in heav­en you are look­ing on anx­ious­ly…En­sur­ing that jus­tice in our land is de­liv­ered swift­ly…Yes Dana, my friend, you left us your lega­cy…Thank you for your vi­sion for a bet­ter, safer coun­try,” Lucky said.

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes af­ter read­ing from one of See­ta­hal’s columns re­called their time at the Of­fice of the DPP.

“We be­gan at DPP to­geth­er. There were not many women there at that time and we con­sid­ered our­selves the fear­less fe­males of the DPP de­part­ment. Now you see my size I could af­ford to be fear­less, but Dana was just like a jep, and I must say to some ex­tent I pat­terned her as we went through crim­i­nal courts wreak­ing hav­oc. We were tak­ing noth­ing from any­body, far less any male at­tor­ney-at-law.”

See­ta­hal was mur­dered in the ear­ly hours of May 4, 2014, af­ter leav­ing the Mau Pau casi­no in Wood­brook. Re­ports on the in­ci­dent stat­ed that See­ta­hal was am­bushed by at­tack­ers in two ve­hi­cles at the cor­ner of Hamil­ton Hold­er Street and O’Con­nor Street, Wood­brook, and shot to death at close range with a hand­gun.

The pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry of the ten men – Ra­jaee Ali and nine mem­bers of his gang - charged with the crime is still on­go­ing in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates Court.