Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices and Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat­narayan Ma­haraj have been giv­en the green light to sue the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) over its fail­ure to dis­close the war­rant used to search Ra­dio and TV Jaa­gri­ti, in April.

High Court Judge Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh yes­ter­day grant­ed the me­dia com­pa­ny and Ma­haraj, leave to pur­sue their ju­di­cial re­view claim against the TTPS.

The de­ci­sion means that the par­ties now have to file their claim be­fore a date is set for the first hear­ing of the case.

The par­ties sought leave for the law­suit af­ter the TTPS re­fused its re­quest to dis­close the war­rant to them, last month.

Re­spond­ing to the re­quest, the TTPS’s Di­rec­tor of Le­gal Ser­vices Chris­t­ian Chan­dler claimed that their le­gal chal­lenge over the process used to pro­cure the war­rant was mis­guid­ed.

“It is not enough, as with the tort of ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion, to prove the ab­sence of rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause to seek a war­rant as is clear­ly the on­ly plau­si­ble as­ser­tion that can be dis­cerned from your let­ter. It is up­on this ba­sis that I dare say your claim would mis­er­ably fail, plac­ing your client in an em­bar­rass­ing po­si­tion,” Chan­dler said.

He main­tained that po­lice of­fi­cers had a le­git­i­mate search war­rant sought un­der Sec­tion 13 of the Se­di­tion Act.

“It is thus ve­he­ment­ly de­nied, that the of­fi­cers act­ed in a high-hand­ed man­ner and re­fused to par­tic­u­larise the war­rant to your client, as the war­rant was showed and read to agents of your client and the po­lice of­fi­cers would have no dif­fi­cul­ty in ad­duc­ing such ev­i­dence,” he said as he claimed that the TTPS would on­ly be re­quired to dis­close the doc­u­ment at the end of le­gal pro­ceed­in­gs.

Chan­dler al­so de­nied al­le­ga­tions that the TTPS col­lud­ed with the Tele­com­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) de­scrib­ing the claims as base­less, reck­less and un­found­ed. The search war­rant was ex­e­cut­ed at CBS’s of­fice at Pasea Main Road Ex­ten­sion on April 18 fol­low­ing con­tro­ver­sial state­ments made by Ma­haraj on the tele­vi­sion sta­tion’s Ma­ha Sab­ha Strikes Back pro­gramme.

Ma­haraj claimed that cit­i­zens liv­ing in To­ba­go are lazy and la­belled the men as rapists.

The vis­it by po­lice of­fi­cers came short­ly af­ter TATT is­sued a let­ter warn­ing the sta­tion over the broad­cast. Ma­haraj and the com­pa­ny have al­so threat­ened to sue TATT over its con­duct in the case but are yet to re­ceive leave to pur­sue that claim.

They are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Ste­fan Ramkissoon.