A for­mer mur­der ac­cused, cur­rent­ly seek­ing asy­lum in the Unit­ed King­dom af­ter al­leged­ly wit­ness­ing the mur­der of her cousin and his wife at the hands of two close rel­a­tives, has crossed the first hur­dle in her le­gal bat­tle over al­leged breach­es of her con­sti­tu­tion­al rights dur­ing her over decade-long stint in prison.

De­liv­er­ing a writ­ten de­ci­sion on Thurs­day, High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed re­ject­ed an ap­pli­ca­tion call­ing on Na­dia Pooran to prove that she has the abil­i­ty to cov­er the le­gal costs in­curred by the State in de­fend­ing her case if she is even­tu­al­ly un­suc­cess­ful.

In dis­miss­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that Pooran’s case raised al­le­ga­tions of breach­es of fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights with the Women’s Prison in Arou­ca, which are of pub­lic in­ter­est and im­por­tance.

“An or­der for se­cu­ri­ty for costs in the cir­cum­stances of this case will be op­pres­sive to the Claimant be­cause the or­der would po­ten­tial­ly de­ny the Claimant an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sus­tain the claim,” he said.

Pooran, Shelly-Ann Anganoo, Nicholas Ali, and Tes­fa Jones were ac­cused of mur­der­ing 41-year-old teacher Ral­phy Ram­cha­ran on March 25, 2003.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed dur­ing their tri­al, the women were lim­ing with Ram­cha­ran at a bar in Curepe and agreed to leave with him.

When they got in­to the car, Ali and Jones en­tered the ve­hi­cle.

Ram­cha­ran was robbed of his cash and re­strained be­fore one of the men drove the group to a lone­ly area of Barataria.

Ram­cha­ran was beat­en with a wheel span­ner and re­peat­ed­ly stabbed with a pair of scis­sors be­fore be­ing thrown in­to a near­by riv­er.

When she was ini­tial­ly de­tained by po­lice, Pooran, who was 18 at the time, claimed that she was part of a plan with her co-ac­cused to rob Ram­cha­ran of his car.

She claimed that Ram­cha­ran at­tempt­ed to re­sist while dri­ving to Barataria and she stabbed him with the scis­sors.

The group was al­lowed to plead guilty to the less­er of­fence of manslaugh­ter and was sen­tenced to 20 years in prison.

The four in­di­vid­u­als won their ap­peals over the sever­i­ty of their sen­tence, with it be­ing re­duced by the Court of Ap­peal to 15 years.

In the law­suit be­fore Jus­tice Mo­hammed, Pooran’s lawyers are con­tend­ing that her con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were in­fringed as she was sub­ject­ed to in­hu­mane and cru­el prison con­di­tions at the prison be­fore her even­tu­al re­lease.

She is al­so con­tend­ing that she was wrong­ly clas­si­fied as a con­vict­ed pris­on­er be­tween fil­ing her ap­peal in 2015 and when the Court of Ap­peal up­held it in April 2016.

She is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions and com­pen­sa­tion.

In her af­fi­davit at­tached to her re­sponse to the ap­pli­ca­tion by the State at­tor­neys, which was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed by Jus­tice Mo­hammed, Pooran sought to de­tail why she is cur­rent­ly seek­ing asy­lum in the UK.

She claimed that in 2019 af­ter be­ing re­leased from prison she wit­nessed the mur­ders of her cousin Ker­ron Ram­per­sad and his girl­friend Crys­tal Her­ralal, who were shot dead in front of her St Joseph home by two male rel­a­tives, who she claimed were gang mem­bers.

She claimed that she re­ceived death threats from her rel­a­tives af­ter she pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion on the cou­ple’s mur­ders to the po­lice.

She said that she de­cid­ed to seek asy­lum in the UK as homi­cide de­tec­tives could not pro­vide wit­ness pro­tec­tion for her.

“I was in fear for my life and the po­lice were telling me that they could not guar­an­tee my safe­ty and could not of­fer any wit­ness pro­tec­tion. It was un­der these cir­cum­stances my plan to seek asy­lum ger­mi­nat­ed,” Pooran said.

She claimed that af­ter trav­el­ling to the UK, her apart­ment was de­stroyed in an ar­son at­tack, which she sus­pect­ed was an at­tempt to de­stroy the CCTV footage of the mur­ders.

She claimed that one of her broth­ers was at home at the time of the ar­son at­tack and died in the re­sult­ing fire.

She said that she can­not re­turn to Trinidad to pur­sue the case in per­son as if she does she would lose her sta­tus as an asy­lum seek­er.

“Fur­ther­more, I sim­ply do not have the funds to re­turn to Trinidad at this time,” Pooran said, as she not­ed she is not al­lowed to work there and on­ly re­ceives a £64 week­ly al­lowance from the UK Gov­ern­ment while her ap­pli­ca­tion is be­ing processed.

A case man­age­ment hear­ing in Pooran’s case is sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 27.

Pooran is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, Che Din­di­al, Alana Ram­baran and Ganesh Sa­roop.

Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Mon­i­ca Smith, Maria Bel­mar-Williams, Sav­it­ri Ma­haraj and Svet­lana Dass are rep­re­sent­ing the State.