COLWYN Harding, the young man who alleged that he was brutally baton-raped and otherwise assaulted by two police officers while in custody in 2013, will continue giving testimony on Friday, after his emotional break-down and the prosecution’s absence had stalled proceedings.On Friday, July 10, 2015, the court was forced to adjourn after Prosecutor, Attorney-at-Law Nigel Hughes failed to appear at the Providence Magistrates’ Court on the second day of the trial.

Hughes was appointed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) as a prosecutor through the means of a “Fiat,” rather than a state prosecutor assigned in the matter.
Attorney-at-Law Leslie Sobers had remarked that Hughes’s lateness has become a burden when one has to wait in ignorance. Sobers, representing the female police officer Roselle Tilbury-Douglas, addressed the court in a joint application with Mr Glenn Hanoman, representing constable Devin Singh and made an application for dismissal of the matter in the absence of the prosecution. However, the magistrate rejected the application.
Nevertheless, both lawyers said that should the prosecution fail to appear again as requested, the matter should be dismissed.
When the case was first called on June 27, the magistrate was ready to adjourn when Hughes arrived late.
Harding, before his emotional break-down, had testified that the police went to his home where he was with his girlfriend Tenisha Evans, at Timehri on November 15, 2013, and kicked down his back door. Harding said Constable Singh handcuffed him and dragged him into the bedroom, while the other officers continued to search the house.
Singh, Harding had noted, had become annoyed when he denied being a member of the notorious ‘Hot Skull’ gang and began beating him. When he tried to scream, he said the constable gagged him with his underwear and continued beating him.

The witness explained that he was then dragged into the kitchen, where he was further interrogated and brutally beaten by the said officer, causing him to fall to his knees.
Police Constables Devin Singh, of Lot 125 Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara, and Roselle Tilbury-Douglas of Alliance Road, Timehri, East Bank Demerara, have been jointly charged with assaulting Harding during the period November 1 to November 13, 2013, at the Timehri Police Station, so as to cause him actual bodily harm. Devin Singh was also slapped with an additional and separate assault charge.
According to reports, the two police officers who were based at the Timehri Police Station, pushed a condom-covered baton up Harding’s anus in November, 2013. Harding, who was at the time a prisoner on remand for allegedly assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, had suffered a ruptured intestine. Harding later underwent two private examinations, one at a private hospital here and the other in Jamaica and the conclusion from both examinations was that a foreign object had been inserted into his anus.