Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A High Court judge says the court must ex­er­cise ju­di­cious cau­tion in mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing a State of Emer­gency (SoE), as he up­held the use of emer­gency pow­ers to ex­tend a sus­pect’s de­ten­tion be­yond 48 hours.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad made the re­mark as he dis­missed a claim brought by De­nesh Ma­haraj, who chal­lenged his sev­en-day ex­tend­ed de­ten­tion by po­lice in Sep­tem­ber 2025, ar­gu­ing that it was un­law­ful and breached his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

Ma­haraj, who had sued act­ing As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice An­tho­ny St Clair and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, was al­so or­dered to pay the de­fen­dants’ costs.

Ma­haraj said he was ar­rest­ed at an NP ser­vice sta­tion in St He­le­na on Sep­tem­ber 25, for “in­quiries” be­fore an or­der was is­sued au­tho­ris­ing his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions (EPR).

In his ev­i­dence, St Clair stat­ed that Ma­haraj’s ar­rest was based on ini­tial in­for­ma­tion that he was in pos­ses­sion of firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and mar­i­jua­na and was part of a gang.

St Clair said he al­so re­ceived fur­ther re­ports from the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit link­ing Ma­haraj to on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, re­quir­ing a range of in­ves­tiga­tive steps which could not be com­plet­ed with­in the ini­tial 48-hour pe­ri­od. As a re­sult, he is­sued a Fur­ther De­ten­tion Or­der (FDO) for a fur­ther sev­en days.

In his rul­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said St Clair’s de­ci­sion ap­peared to be ground­ed in “mul­ti-source in­tel­li­gence,” the al­leged re­cov­ery of firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and nar­cotics, and on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to se­ri­ous of­fences, in­clud­ing kid­nap­ping and gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

While not­ing that courts have a du­ty to “fierce­ly de­fend” con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, the judge em­pha­sised that such rights are not ab­solute.