Hours af­ter be­ing freed of mur­der­ing two men due to de­lays in pros­e­cut­ing his case, a man from Ari­ma was ar­rest­ed and charged with the crime once again.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that lawyers for Cey­on “Six” Nicholas, of Si­mon Road, Cara­po, raised con­cerns over the move as he ap­peared be­fore High Court Mas­ter Deli­cia Bethelmy on Thurs­day af­ter­noon.

In ear­ly 2022, Nicholas was charged with mur­der­ing Richie Richard Ra­goo, Em­manuel Ny­ron Phillip and the at­tempt­ed mur­der of an­oth­er man. He was al­so slapped with firearm and am­mu­ni­tion pos­ses­sion charges.

The three men were shot at a garage at Jokhan Trace, Cara­po on Oc­to­ber 25, 2021.

On Wednes­day, he was dis­charged by High Court Mas­ter Whit­ney Franklyn af­ter pros­e­cu­tors failed to meet a dead­line for fil­ing the ev­i­dence against Nicholas, in­clud­ing the sworn state­ment of the State’s main wit­ness, who im­pli­cat­ed him.

State pros­e­cu­tors sought an ex­ten­sion to com­plete the process, but the ap­pli­ca­tion, which was op­posed by Nicholas’ lawyer Roshan To­ta-Ma­haraj, was de­nied.

Mas­ter Franklyn made the de­ci­sion to dis­charge Nicholas af­ter pros­e­cu­tors said that they could not pro­ceed with­out the ev­i­dence or an ex­ten­sion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Nicholas was sub­se­quent­ly re­leased from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca.

Hours lat­er, he was ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers as­signed to the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion and was charged with the same of­fences for which he was dis­charged.

When Nicholas ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Bethelmy Thurs­day af­ter­noon, po­lice pros­e­cu­tor In­sp Mungroo asked for eight weeks to dis­close the ev­i­dence against Nicholas.

He said that wit­ness state­ments were be­ing fi­nalised by in­ves­ti­ga­tors, who were hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in get­ting the wit­ness­es to swear to their ev­i­dence.

Nicholas’ oth­er lawyer, Keron Ramkhal­whan, chal­lenged what tran­spired, which he de­scribed as an abuse of process.

He sug­gest­ed that Mas­ter Bethelmy did not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the re­filed case un­der the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA) as the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) should have ap­pealed Mas­ter Franklyn’s de­ci­sion in­stead.

“To re­lay the same charges is an abuse and con­trary to law, ul­tra vires AJI­PA. We are ask­ing that these charges be dis­missed,” Ramkhal­whan said.

Mas­ter Bethelmy gave the par­ties dead­lines to file sub­mis­sions on the is­sue and promised to de­liv­er a rul­ing on May 29.

—DEREK ACHONG