Senior Magistrate Leron Daly on Tuesday announced that she will rule in April on the charge against Sharmila Inderjali and Maryanna Lionel, who have been on trial after allegedly offering a policeman $4 million in cash to release the accused in the murder of Number 70 Village carpenter Faiyaz Narinedatt.
The charge against the two women states that they corruptly offered $4 million to Detective Sergeant Kamal Pitamal on November 19th, 2016, at Eve Leary, to forego charges against the suspects in custody for the murder as well as Marcus Bisram, who was overseas and wanted by local authorities in connection with the crime.
Inderjali is Bisram’s mother.
At Tuesday’s hearing, the women heard that based on a no-case submission presented by their attorney, Sanjeev Datadin, the magistrate needs time to take all the evidence provided to the court into consideration before making a decision. The matter was then adjourned until April 21st. Datadin maintained that throughout the trial the prosecution has given no solid evidence that could be used to convict his clients.
The case is being prosecuted by Police Prosecutor Richard Harris. Datadin said that the prosecutor is relying on conflicting evidence given to the court by witnesses. He stated that the main witness, Pitamal, has told the court that he set up the meeting as a sting operation. The lawyer added that he could not believe that two sane young women, whom he called “country people,” could possibly go to such a high ranking officer and bribe him.
He suggested to the magistrate that even in her position she could not just walk up to the office of a high ranking policeman and he added that even lawyers do not get to speak with their clients at the police station, whenever they see fit. Therefore, he said that for the police to say that his clients entered the Criminal Investigation Department and attempted to bribe a sergeant of Pitamal’s ranking was not believable. The attorney said, “No one does that… these two [his clients] came in, took out the money and said ‘here is the money.’ That is not believable because we live in the real world and in the real world, no one does that.”