Ten years after being arrested and charged with failing to provide a breath specimen, a motorist has won a High Court lawsuit against the State for malicious prosecution, wrongful arrest, and false imprisonment.
Justice Robin Mohammed ruled in favour of Narace Dwarpaul and ordered the State to pay more than $100,000 in damages and interest arising from his arrest and prosecution on June 11, 2016.
Evidence before the court showed that Dwarpaul was heading home from work when police stopped him during a routine road exercise along the M2 Ring Road, La Fortune. Officers claimed he failed a field sobriety test and later failed to provide a valid breath specimen after three attempts, each returning a “Void” reading before the device shut down.
Dwarpaul was charged but, on September 6, 2017, a magistrate upheld a no-case submission and dismissed the charge. In December 2019, represented by attorneys Christian Deena and Vishwanath Rambaran, he sued the State.
In his testimony, Dwarpaul denied consuming alcohol that night. He said he blew into the device as instructed but was told he was wasting police time. He was arrested without caution, handcuffed, and taken to the San Fernando Police Station, where he was placed in a foul-smelling cell for seven hours and denied a phone call before being granted bail.
During the magistrates’ court proceedings, police tendered a test record bearing a female name and the year 2015 as Dwarpaul’s 2016 result. Justice Mohammed found this deeply troubling, noting: “The absence of contemporaneous records, the missing test slip, the failure to call the initial officer, the internal inconsistencies, and the erroneous test record all point to a prosecution not founded on reasonable and probable cause.”
He further concluded that the police acted with malice: “The inference is that he was prepared to use questionable means – including an erroneous test record – to secure a conviction. I find that it is an improper and wrongful motive.”
The State was ordered to pay general damages of $85,000 plus $13,332.19 in interest, and special damages of $7,500 plus $988.45 in interest. While the judge dismissed claims for aggravated and exemplary damages, he ordered the State to pay Dwarpaul’s legal costs.
