On No­vem­ber 6, Se­nior Mag­is­trate Mar­garet Alert is ex­pect­ed to present her de­ci­sion on whether the re­cent as­sault and ma­li­cious charges against em­bat­tled A&V Oil and Gas Ltd CEO Hanif Naz­im Baksh and his son-in-law Sgt Bil­ly Ram­sun­dar is an abuse of process.

When the mat­ter was called in the Siparia Mag­is­trates Court yes­ter­day, Alert, who presided in the First Court, ad­journed the mat­ter as she need­ed more time to as­sess sub­mis­sions by the de­fence and the pros­e­cu­tion.

Baksh and Ram­sun­dar were present in court along with their at­tor­ney, for­mer EMA deputy di­rec­tor Michael Rooplal and had their bail con­tin­ued.

Mau­ri­ceia Joseph held for State pros­e­cu­tor Sab­ri­na Doogdeen-Jaglal.

Both men were charged fol­low­ing an al­leged at­tack against Guardian Me­dia se­nior pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kris­t­ian De Sil­va out­side the A&V’s com­pound along Naz­im Av­enue, San Fran­cique, in Sep­tem­ber 2017. At the time, De Sil­va was tak­ing pho­tos of the premis­es fol­low­ing re­ports that the com­pa­ny was em­broiled in the “Fake Oil” scan­dal with Petrotrin.

Baksh is the fa­ther of for­mer PNM Sen­a­tor Allyson Baksh, who is the wife of Ram­sun­dar.

On No­vem­ber 10, Baksh was charged with as­sault­ing De Sil­va, oc­ca­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm and un­law­ful­ly and ma­li­cious­ly dam­ag­ing De Sil­va’s eye­glass­es val­ued at $2,400.

Ram­sun­dar, a po­lice of­fi­cer with 27 years ser­vice, was al­so charged for dam­ag­ing De Sil­va’s Canon DSLR cam­era val­ued at US$1,600.

On March 12, 2018, Baksh was again tak­en to court, this time for al­leged­ly is­su­ing threats to in­flu­ence Khu­sial Moti­ram, who was a po­ten­tial wit­ness in a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the as­sault of De Sil­va, to give false ev­i­dence and with­hold true ev­i­dence.

With the pros­e­cu­tion re­quest­ing ad­journ­ments over 18 months af­ter the charges were laid, Baksh’s De­fence team led by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, in­clu­sive of for­mer le­gal af­fairs min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, ap­plied for the mat­ter to be dis­missed.

In Ju­ly Alert up­held a sub­mis­sion and dis­missed the charge. Weeks lat­er, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard SC gave po­lice in­struc­tions to re­lay the charges.

When all par­ties ap­peared in the Court be­fore Mag­is­trate Wendy Dougdeen-Bal­ly on Sep­tem­ber 3 for a sec­ond stint of the case, Ma­haraj raised a pre­lim­i­nary ob­jec­tion, say­ing that the re­lay­ing of the charges con­sti­tut­ed an un­fair ma­nip­u­la­tion of the pros­e­cu­tion process.

On Sep­tem­ber 10, the de­fence filed its sub­mis­sions for abuse of process and the pros­e­cu­tion re­spond­ed on Sep­tem­ber 18.

The de­fence re­spond­ed to the State on Sep­tem­ber 25 and a de­ci­sion was sup­posed to be giv­en yes­ter­day.

Alert had on­ly re­cent­ly re­turned from va­ca­tion.

Both de­fence and pros­e­cu­tion agreed that No­vem­ber 6 be sched­uled for a de­ter­mi­na­tion of whether the case will be al­lowed to con­tin­ue.