Derek Achong

A Pe­nal busi­ness­man, who sued a sol­dier for defama­tion af­ter he (the sol­dier) al­leged that he threw a pig’s head in his yard in a re­port to po­lice, has lost his case be­fore it even went to tri­al.

De­liv­er­ing an oral de­ci­sion on Thurs­day, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion from Jaiper­sad Be­har­ry to strike out the case against him brought by Rus­sell Bhikar­rie.

In his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Bhilka­r­rie, who op­er­ates a se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, claimed that he had a heat­ed ar­gu­ment with Be­har­ry late last year.

Bhilka­r­rie claimed that in April, he was con­tact­ed by an of­fi­cer as­signed to the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion, who in­formed him that Be­har­ry had made a re­port about the an­i­mal head be­ing al­leged­ly thrown in­to his yard.

Bhilka­r­rie de­nied any wrong­do­ing and claimed that Be­har­ry fab­ri­cat­ed the al­le­ga­tion.

De­spite not be­ing charged over the re­port, Bhilka­r­rie filed the law­suit al­leg­ing that his rep­u­ta­tion was dam­aged.

In his de­fence, Be­har­ry claimed that he and Bhilka­r­rie had a cor­dial re­la­tion­ship as Bhilka­r­rie’s sis­ter was mar­ried to his first cousin and lived a short dis­tance away.

He claimed that the re­la­tion­ship de­te­ri­o­rat­ed af­ter Bhilka­r­rie al­leged­ly asked him to bor­row his T&T De­fence Force uni­form to pose in pho­tographs for so­cial me­dia and he re­fused.

Be­har­ry al­so de­nied mak­ing a false re­port to the po­lice as he claimed that the in­ci­dent with the pig head oc­curred af­ter sev­er­al ver­bal al­ter­ca­tions be­tween them.

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the case, Seep­er­sad had to de­cide whether Bhilka­r­rie could pur­sue a defama­tion law­suit over the re­port or if (the re­port) was cov­ered by the de­fence of ab­solute priv­i­lege.

Seep­er­sad had to con­sid­er Com­mon­wealth le­gal prece­dents as the is­sue nev­er arose in lo­cal­ly re­port­ed cas­es.

He ruled that it was cov­ered by the de­fence as he not­ed that cit­i­zens should be con­fi­dent that they would not face col­lat­er­al pro­ceed­ings af­ter mak­ing re­ports to the po­lice.

Seep­er­sad said, “In a so­ci­ety such as ours where crime is on an up­surge it is im­per­a­tive cit­i­zens feel em­pow­ered and free to make re­ports to po­lice. The mantra “if you see some­thing say some­thing” should be adopt­ed by all cit­i­zens.”

“The po­lice very of­ten re­ly on the co­op­er­a­tion of cit­i­zens to un­earth in­for­ma­tion and ought not to be fet­tered by state­ments be­ing the sub­ject of a defam­a­to­ry suit,” he added.

He al­so point­ed out that Bhilka­r­rie could have been charged with wast­ing po­lice time if the of­fi­cer, who re­ceived the re­port, ob­tained ev­i­dence of the al­le­ga­tions be­ing fab­ri­cat­ed as claimed.

“There is suf­fi­cient pro­tec­tion built in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” he said.

As part of his de­ci­sion in the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered Bhilka­r­rie to pay Be­har­ry $6,300 in le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the short-lived law­suit.

Bhilka­r­rie was rep­re­sent­ed by Jee­van Ram­per­sad, while Wendy Ram­nath-Pan­day rep­re­sent­ed Be­har­ry.