DPP fails in bid to remove Judge presiding over Haresh Singh’s murder case

…application followed ruling to try one of four accused separately

Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Shalimar Ali-Hack has failed in an attempt to have Justice Priscilla Chandra-Hanif removed from the Haresh Singh murder case after she refused an application for her to recuse herself from the proceedings on Friday. The application followed an earlier ruling by Justice Chandra-Hanif to separate the trial of first-named accused Phillip Anderson, called “Rat Man,” from that of the other three men charged with the 2020 murder of the 17-year-old West Coast Berbice (WCB) resident. The other accused are Joel Gittens, called “Bolo”; Charles Scott, called “Bucko”; and Glaston Henry, also known as Gladwin Henry or “Soldier Man.” Under the Judge’s ruling, Anderson is to be tried separately, while Gittens, Scott and Henry are to stand trial together. The prosecution disagreed with the decision and subsequently asked Justice Chandra-Hanif to reconsider and recall her ruling to sever the indictment.

When that attempt was unsuccessful, the DPP moved to have the Judge recuse herself from further hearing the matter. In seeking her recusal, the prosecution raised concerns about the Judge’s treatment of issues surrounding identification and alibi evidence, along with a caution statement attributed to Anderson. The State contended that there was a real possibility that issues which remained to be determined at trial had been prejudged and that the circumstances gave rise to an appearance of possible bias. Justice Chandra-Hanif rejected those arguments on Friday, finding that a fair-minded and informed observer, considering her earlier ruling as a whole and in its proper context, would not conclude that there was a real possibility of bias. In addressing the prosecution’s concerns, the Judge stressed that the ultimate determination of the evidence and the guilt or innocence of the accused would be for a jury. “Most importantly, the ultimate assessment of identification evidence, alibi evidence, witness credibility and guilt in the contemplated trial is not of the judge. It belongs to the jury,” she said.
The Haresh Singh murder case had initially been listed for hearing during the Berbice Assizes but was subsequently transferred to the High Court in Georgetown amid the large number of matters before the Berbice court. Singh, called “Raj,” was 17 years old and lived at Number Three Village, WCB. His body was discovered in the Number Two Village backdam on September 9, 2020, three days after the bodies of cousins Isaiah and Joel Henry were found in the Cotton Tree backlands.
A post-mortem examination (PME) found that Singh died from brain haemorrhage and blunt trauma to the head, compounded by compression injuries to the neck. Investigators subsequently alleged that Singh’s killing was an act of retaliation arising from the murders of the Henry cousins.
The deaths of the three teenagers occurred during a period of heightened tension on the WCB and resulted in separate murder prosecutions. Earlier this year, the case against two of the men accused of murdering Isaiah and Joel Henry reached its conclusion at the Berbice High Court. Anil Sancharra, called “Dan Pole” and “Rasta,” and Vinod Gopaul, called “Magga,” were found guilty by a jury in June of murdering the cousins.
The two men were subsequently sentenced in July to life imprisonment, with eligibility for parole after serving 35 years. The prosecution of the four men charged with Singh’s murder, meanwhile, remains before the High Court. With the DPP’s recusal application now refused, Justice Chandra-Hanif remains on the case, while her earlier ruling separating Anderson’s trial from that of Gittens, Scott and Henry remain in place.