BEFORE he discharged 44-year-old Ramsahai Boodoo of the charge that he had murdered Eon Daniels on July 8, 2011, Justice William Ramlal on Thursday warned him about the use of alcohol, and added:

“This verdict does not mean you are not, in some way, connected with this matter.”

Prosecutrix Dhanika Singh, who had only circumstantial evidence to rely on, could not produce eyewitness testimony to show how Daniels had been fatally wounded in the abdomen. Her strongest point was the doctor’s evidence, which gave the cause of death as shock and haemorrhage in his post-mortem report. On the fateful day of July 8, 2011, when the two men had an altercation, the accused, Ramsahai, reportedly had a knife in his possession, while the deceased, Daniels, was seen with a pot spoon.

Defence counsel, Mr. Peter Hugh had told the jury that the prosecutor had no direct or circumstantial evidence to show that the accused Ramsahai was the person who had inflicted the wound on Daniels. And he also told the jury that the prosecution could not deny that the wound which caused Daniels’s death could have been accidentally inflicted.

In an unsworn statement from the dock, Ramshai had spoken about an argument he had had with Daniels, and he said they had grabbed each other and had both fallen. He had said that following the fall, he got up and went away.

The prosecutor had asked the jury to find, from circumstantial evidence, that the accused was the person who had stabbed Daniels, causing him to die later in hospital.

On resumption of the trial Thursday, Justice Ramlal had summed up the evidence in 2 ½ hours, and the jury took two hours to reach its unanimous verdict of not guilty of murder.

(By George Barclay)