Ke­jan Haynes

A High Court judge has grant­ed a stay against the Pris­ons Ser­vice, pre­vent­ing them from tak­ing dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against pris­ons of­fi­cer Ar­shad Singh.

Jus­tice Mar­garet Mo­hammed ruled no dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion could be tak­en un­til the hear­ing and de­ter­mi­na­tion of this ac­tion or un­til fur­ther or­der.

Singh, through his at­tor­ney Im­ran Khan, filed two mat­ters against the Pris­ons Ser­vice: a ju­di­cial re­view mat­ter con­cern­ing the fail­ure to pro­mote him as due and a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion chal­leng­ing the va­lid­i­ty and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Prison Ser­vice Or­der which pro­hibits the wear­ing of a beard.

De­spite the case still be­ing heard in the high court, the Pris­ons Ser­vice moved to take dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against him.

Ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments, on Feb­ru­ary 2, the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons brought a case of mis­con­duct against Singh, say­ing he was dis­obe­di­ent.

“That you, Prison Of­fi­cer II Ar­shad Singh on Oc­to­ber 10, 2022 around 1.25 pm were dis­obe­di­ent to or­ders when you re­port­ed to the Port-of-Spain Prison as per tem­po­rary as­sign­ment and was ob­served to be un­shaven by As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Pris­ons (act­ing) Nigel Thomas. Con­trary to Reg­u­la­tion 20(2)(c) of the Prison Ser­vice (Code of Con­duct) Reg­u­la­tion 1990 and Gen­er­al Or­der #104 of 2006 (11),” the dis­ci­pli­nary let­ter read.

In his af­fi­davit to the court, Singh claimed the “pro­posed dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings were com­menced as a re­sult of the Claimant wear­ing his beard pur­suant to his re­li­gious be­lief and ob­ser­vance and con­science as a de­vout Mus­lim.”

At­tor­ney Khan said they had hoped the Pris­ons Ser­vice would have await­ed the out­come of the court pro­ceed­ings be­fore tak­ing any ac­tion.

“Mr Singh has oth­er­wise had an un­blem­ished record of ser­vice,” Khan said in an email to Guardian Me­dia.

“How­ev­er, to our dis­may and sur­prise, the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons still em­barked up­on in­ter­nal dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against our client and is­sued him a let­ter dat­ed 2nd Feb­ru­ary, 2023. This was a very high hand­ed ap­proach in our view and ig­nored the fact that pro­ceed­ings had been com­menced by the client to safe­guard his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to free­dom of con­science, re­li­gious be­lief and ob­ser­vance.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar for com­ment but none was forth­com­ing up to late yes­ter­day.