High Seas Pirate on trial for robbery under arms
JUSTICE Brassington Reynolds has allowed an application by the State to amend the indictment of a robbery under arms accused, to include the name ‘Ayodiaram’. The application was made by State Counsel Dionne Mc Cammon, after the man in the dock denied being named Ram Sookdial, called Kevin Narine.

Prior to the application being granted, the pony-tailed prisoner objected. However, he failed to state his grounds and, thereafter, apologized before informing the Court that he will withdraw his objection.

Earlier, the prisoner, who had laid over the original copy of a birth certificate which he claimed to be his, responding to questions by the Judge, said he received the deposition a few weeks ago, for which he signed the name Ram Sookdial.

He further agreed to having signed that name during the preliminary inquiry. However, he defended his actions by informing the Judge that it was the police who used the names Sookdial and Narine to institute the charge against him. The accused said he just went along with their idea.

Addressing the Court, Mc Cammon observed that there was nothing on the deposition to substantiate what the prisoner told the Magistrate – that he was not Ram Sookdial or Kevin Narine.

‘There are no notes from the Magistrate that the accused would have told him that,” she argued.
Further, she added, the accused at the close of the prosecution’s case at the Preliminary Inquiry, sought leave to lay over seven pages of written submissions, to which he signed Ram Sookdial on each page.

After listening to the various submissions, the Judge informed the accused that he had made note of what transpired, but the trial will commence.

Meanwhile, in his evidence in chief, Balwant Hemraj recounted  being the captain of his fishing vessel ‘Shiva’, in the high seas off the Number 47 shore, when the accused – whom  he knew as Kevin Narine and ‘Long Hair’, armed with a gun, robbed him of a 40 Horse Power Yamaha outboard engine [valued $500,000], a barrel of gasoline [$40,000],  groceries [$30,000],  fifteen hundred pounds  of fish [snapper and trout  valued $400,000], fishing glue ($192,000] totalling $1,162,000.
The victim told the Judge and the mixed jury he had known the accused a year prior to the incident as he, too, had owned a boat which he had also moored at the Number 66 Village.

Recalling the incident, Hemraj said that on August 10, 2007, at about 13:30hrs, he was in company with four crew members  namely ‘Daby’, ‘Radesh’, ‘Tad’, and another boy whose name he did not know, when he saw a smaller vessel approaching.
“At about four feet away, I heard an explosion like a shot fired and a person saying ‘every one lie down flat with your face downwards,” Hemraj said.

According to the witness, the other boat was tied to his vessel before the intruders jumped aboard, removing the engine, and the fish from the ice box. He said shortly afterwards, someone called for the captain and when he [the victim] responded, the accused asked  him to give him a hand with the engine and the  gasoline.

Referring to the man in the dock, Hemraj said the man spoke to him.

“He asked me if I know him, as he is Kevin Narine. He said what he come for, he has to get, and I can’t do anything,” the witness told the court.

However, the witness, on being questioned by Mc Cammon as to whether the intruder in the boat was masked, the accused objected to the line of questioning, saying that it was ‘a leading question’.

In responding to a rephrased question, the victim said he saw the accused, whom he spoke with for about thirty minutes. Nothing blocked his view, he said. However, he told the court that the other men who were in company with the accused were masked.

Hemraj said he did not prevent the accused from  taking the articles as he [the accused] was armed and he (Hemraj) was afraid  of him.

The witness recalled that after the pirates departed, the boat drifted for twenty four hours before arriving at Wellington Park, another Corentyne location, where he anchored the vessel, before going to the Number 66 Fishing Complex, where he later returned with the boat.
Hemraj said a report was made to the Chairman of the Fishing Society and sleuths at Number 51 Police Station.
On August 6, 2008 he attended an identification parade, where he picked out the accused.
However, in response to questions by the accused, the witness denied suffering from a loss of memory, and confessed of ‘never lying’.
He also recalled giving his statements before the Magistrate during the Preliminary Inquiry, which he signed as being true and correct, but thereafter accepted the suggestion of the accused which said that, at no time, did the accused mention to him the name Kevin Narine.

Under further questioning  with regards to the  consistency of statements and evidence, the Judge informed the accused that there was a typographic error with the words ‘fuel’ and  ‘fish’, after he said there was no evidence of ‘men stealing  a barrel of gasoline’.
The accused suggested that the witness never said the words ‘Captain, get up’ to which the prosecution conceded, but noted that the exact words were not used but the meanings were similar.
In his defence, the accused argued that in the deposition, the victim said he was ‘ordered’; yet in the trial, he said  he was ‘asked’ to give the accused a hand in removing the gasoline and engine.
The trial is continuing.