Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The State has been or­dered to pay over $250,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a man who was ma­li­cious­ly pros­e­cut­ed for com­mit­ting a rob­bery.

High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Adri­an Kissoon last week as he up­held his case against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The law­suit re­lat­ed to Kissoon's ar­rest on March 19, 2014.

Kissoon was walk­ing to meet his friends who were fish­ing when he was stopped by a group of po­lice of­fi­cers.

He claimed that the of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed him and placed him in their ve­hi­cle, which al­so con­tained an­oth­er de­tained man.

Kissoon and the man were tak­en to the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion and placed in a cell.

He claimed that the of­fi­cers re­moved him from the cell and de­mand­ed that he sign a one-line state­ment in a book.

Kissoon claimed that he re­fused and was beat­en by the of­fi­cers.

Sev­er­al days lat­er, Kissoon was charged with three counts of rob­bery and was grant­ed $80,000 bail.

He made sev­er­al court ap­pear­ances be­fore the charges were dis­missed in Jan­u­ary 2016.

In de­fence of the case, the AG's Of­fice claimed that the of­fi­cers were in­ves­ti­gat­ing a re­port of an armed rob­bery at a su­per­mar­ket.

The of­fi­cers claimed that Kissoon and the oth­er man were ar­rest­ed while hid­ing in a bushy area near a ba­nana plan­ta­tion af­ter the rob­bery.

They claimed that Kissoon was found in pos­ses­sion of a black and blue knap­sack with a dis­tinct yel­low pat­tern that was worn by one of the rob­bers.

They al­leged that the back­pack con­tained some of the items that were tak­en in the rob­bery.

In de­cid­ing whether the of­fi­cers had rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to sus­pect that Kissoon was in­volved in the rob­bery, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that he did not con­sid­er the ev­i­dence of the of­fi­cer who charged Kissoon, as he failed to at­tend court to tes­ti­fy in the case.

He not­ed that the on­ly of­fi­cer who tes­ti­fied could not pro­vide suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion on Kissoon's ar­rest.

Not­ing that the stan­dard of proof in crim­i­nal cas­es is dif­fer­ent to civ­il law­suits, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that the method of Kissoon be­ing ex­on­er­at­ed was ir­rel­e­vant.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed dis­missed the as­pect of Kissoon's case al­leg­ing as­sault and bat­tery by the of­fi­cers.

He not­ed that a med­ical re­port stat­ing that he had mi­nor bruis­ing to his face, chest, and leg did not sup­port his claims of a pro­longed at­tack by the of­fi­cers.

Deal­ing with mal­ice on the part of the of­fi­cers, Jus­tice Mo­hammed said: "I am sat­is­fied on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties that the un­ex­plained dis­crep­an­cies in the de­scrip­tion of the cen­tral phys­i­cal ev­i­dence, tak­en to­geth­er with the ab­sence of any prop­er­ly ad­mit­ted cor­rob­o­rat­ing ev­i­dence and the con­tin­ued ab­sence of the on­ly of­fi­cer able to ac­count for these gaps, are suf­fi­cient to sup­port the in­fer­ence of mal­ice."

In as­sess­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for Kissoon, Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered $150,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages and $40,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages.

He al­so or­dered the State to pay $33,996.57 in in­ter­est on the com­pen­sa­tion and $42,655 in le­gal costs.

Kissoon was rep­re­sent­ed by Chelsea Stew­art, Haresh Ram­nath and Alana Ram­baran.

The AG's Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Sasha Sukhram, Can­dice Alexan­der and Am­ri­ta Ram­sook.