Four­teen years af­ter he was ac­cused of beat­ing a man with a car tyre rim, Rishi Seep­er­sad has been ac­quit­ted of the charge.

Seep­er­sad, 34, was found not guilty on Tues­day fol­low­ing a judge-alone tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son in the San Fer­nan­do Sec­ond As­sizes.

Both the vic­tim Ter­rence Ram­per­sad and the State's lone eye-wit­ness Mo­han Singh died years ago.   Ram­per­sad passed away on No­vem­ber 24, 2019, while Singh died on Au­gust 7, 2017. The pros­e­cu­tion team re­lied on the ev­i­dence they had giv­en dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry.

The State's on­ly oth­er wit­ness was in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer PC Aaron Ram­di­al who was then as­signed to the Table­land Po­lice sta­tion.

Seep­er­sad of Princes Town was charged with un­law­ful­ly and ma­li­cious­ly in­flict­ing griev­ous bod­i­ly harm on Ram­per­sad on April 25, 2010 near Post Of­fice Trace, Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road, New Grant.

Ram­per­sad had claimed he was about to cross the road when the ac­cused al­leged­ly hit him with some­thing on the left side of his face and neck and he fell on the ground un­con­scious. He suf­fered a dis­lo­cat­ed jaw. 

Singh had tes­ti­fied in the mag­is­trates court that he saw the ac­cused hit Ram­per­sad with an ob­ject and he fell on the ground. He al­so al­leged that the ac­cused picked up a car rim and be­gan hit­ting Ram­per­sad on the head and chest. 

The of­fi­cer's ev­i­dence was that he spoke to Seep­er­sad at the scene and saw Ram­per­sad ly­ing mo­tion­less with blood on his face.

How­ev­er, the judge said he could not be sure when he con­sid­ered the de­po­si­tions of the wit­ness­es as he did not have the ben­e­fit of hear­ing them tes­ti­fy or their ev­i­dence be­ing test­ed in cross-ex­am­i­na­tion. 

 The judge said, "The po­si­tion may very well be dif­fer­ent if I had these wit­ness­es be­fore me and they had been test­ed un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion but that is not the case here."

The pros­e­cu­tion was rep­re­sent­ed by State at­tor­neys Dy­lan Mar­tin and Bran­don Sookoo while Seep­er­sad was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Ja­son Jack­son and Krysan Ram­bert.