The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has filed an appeal challenging the decision of Justice Navindra Singh to free murder accused Shakir Mohamed.
A press statement issued by the DPP’s Chambers said that the State has appealed the verdict.
Mohamed, who was charged with the 2011 murder of Shewraney Doobay, the wife of prominent physician Dr Ramsundar Doobay, was freed in January this year.
Singh, the presiding judge, upheld a no-case submission made by defence attorney Maxwell McKay and later directed the 12-member jury to formally return a verdict of not guilty.
The allegation against Mohamed was that on May 24, 2011, he murdered Doobay, 58, called “Monica,” in the course or furtherance of a robbery. She had been discovered lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor of her Lot 19 Echilibar Villas, Campbellville home.
Mohamed had been jointly charged with Doobay’s nephew, Mark Singh, who subsequently died. The trial judge had told the jury that the state failed to establish sufficient evidence to substantiate that it was Mohamed who had inflicted the deadly injuries on Doobay.
Referring to Mohamed’s caution statement, on which the state was relying to prove its case against him, the judge highlighted further that while the prosecution advanced that Mohamed was operating in a joint enterprise with Mark Singh, the very caution statement and the evidence led in the case did not substantiate such a pact.
Justice Singh said that he could not see where the two minds—Mohamed and Singh—would have met and had the common intention in agreement to together rob and murder Doobay.
The judge said that from the caution statement that it could be reasonably inferred that Mohamed was unaware of what Singh had gone to his aunt’s residence for on the day in question.
Making reference again to the statement, Justice Singh noted that there was evidence to suggest that Mohamed may have been an accessory “after the fact” but cautioned that that was not the charge before the court.
