Charrandass wins $7M in defamation lawsuit against Ramjattan

Jul 28, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC) Party and Opposition Parliamentarian Khemraj Ramjattan has been ordered by the High Court to pay damages in the sum of $7 million to Charrandass Persaud for defamation.

Leader of the AFC, Khemraj Ramjattan .

Guyana’s High Commissioner to India, Charrandass Persaud.

Persaud a former MP of the A Partnership for National Unity +Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) had originally filed a $30 million lawsuit in 2019 against Ramjattan who was at the time the country’s Public Security Minister. High Court Judge Jo-Ann Barlow in handing down the judgment also ordered Ramjattan to refrain from making statements that suggest that Persaud who is now Guyana’s High Commissioner to India was compensated financially for his role in the No-Confidence Motion brought down by the APNU+AFC Government back in 2018.

In handing down her decision Justice Barlow noted: “This court in assessing this matter found that an award of $7 million is appropriate in the circumstances of this case…the defendant shall pay to the claimant costs in the sum of $150,000 (one hundred fifty thousand dollars) on or before 25th August 2022,” the ruling noted.

There were several newspaper articles presented in Court documents which included a statement attributed to Ramjattan in a December 2018 edition of the Guyana Chronicle, titled “Cops closing in on Charrandass” and a Stabroek News edition of January 2019, “Ramjattan: Charrandass Persaud is a villain not a hero.”

It also drew attention to statements made by Ramjattan on Globe Span talk show, streamed on Facebook in February 2019. One of the court’s assertions was that Ramjattan’s referral to Persaud and 30 pieces of silver, could only be taken to mean that Ramjattan was accusing the former AFC MP of taking a bribe, which was designed to slander him.

Persaud contended that these published statements were intended to and had the effect of lowering his reputation, character, morality and honesty as an attorney- at- law in the eyes of right-thinking members of the public. However, Ramjattan insisted that the claims were merely attributed to him and not said by him. He said he was not the author of the articles.

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