Upholding a decision by Magistrate Abigail Gibbs to remand the National Border Patrol Director Daniel Seeram to prison, High Court Judge Joy Persaud-Singh this afternoon dismissed an application filed by Seeram for Judicial Review.

Seeram filed the application hours after he was found guilty of assaulting his ex-wife, and remanded to prison on Friday.

Justice Persaud-Singh, however, ruled that the application did not meet the criteria for Judicial Review.

“The Court finds no indication that the Magistrate acted unlawfully, irrationally or outside of her jurisdiction. Accordingly, the application for Judicial Review is dismissed. The decision of the Learned Magistrate to refuse bail is upheld,” Justice Persaud-Singh ruled.

Justice Persaud-Singh’s ruling was handed down minutes after Seeram’s Attorney, Nigel Hughes, who appeared alongside Attorney-at-Law Tifaine Rutherford, and the Deputy Solicitor General, Shoshanna Lall – Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), and the Attorney General – argued that Magistrate Gibbs erred in law when she remanded Seeram to prison ahead of his November 2 sentencing.

As he made a case for the Magistrate’s decision to be reviewed and overturned, Hughes argued that Magistrate Gibbs made two fatal errors, when she decided to remand Seeram to prison ahead of sentencing, and before she had the benefit of the probation report, the impact statement, and the mitigating and aggravating factors. Hughes submitted that by remanding Seeram, Magistrate Gibbs in effect sentenced him to prison, and in doing so demonstrated a clear bias in the absence of critical reports and statements.

“The remand, which is effectively sentencing to a period imprisonment indicates a bias before the Court had the benefit of all those matters the Court had ordered produced. So, long before the Court had a probation report, long before the Court had the mitigating factors, long before the Court had the benefit of the victim impact statement, and long before the Court had the benefit of the aggravating factors, the Court made a finding and effectively imprisoned [the defendant] while waiting on the matters,” Hughes argued.

Hughes told the Court that although none of the grounds of Section 9 of the Bail Act of Guyana had been established, the lower court did not allow Seeram to retain his liberty pending his sentencing. He had been previously placed on bail.

He submitted further that the nature of the eventual sentence whether custodial or non-custodial was a matter to be determined at sentencing after full submissions.

The State Counsel, who from the onset acknowledged that domestic violence remains a “serious” issue in Guyana, and that Seeram was found guilty of assaulting his wife, also argued that the Magistrate erred in law.

Lall submitted to the Court that “Section 9 of the Bail Act was not engaged at all.”  She submitted that there is no mandatory sentence that is imposed by law for offences relating to assault, and by remanding Seeram, the Court would have in effect sentenced him, ahead of the actual sentencing.

“And really and truly your honour, on a matter of law, the Magistrate has erred. That’s our respectful submission…We respectfully say that she fell into grave error when she determined the offence mandated a mandatory term of imprisonment, that’s what she read into the Act your honour,” Lall said.

Lall said it is as if, the Learned Magistrate has shown her hands.

But the arguments put forward by both Hughes and Lall were not sufficient to secure a review of Magistrate Gibbs decision to remand Seeram.

Seeram, who since Friday, was being held at the Sparendaam Police Station pending today’s hearing, is now expected to be handed over to the prison authorities.

Seeram, a former Region 4 Regional Chairman, was found guilty assaulting his ex-wife Farzana Hamid resulting in actual bodily harm. Hamid suffered injuries to her head, eyes, left arm and thigh, and breast among other sections of her body during an altercation with her ex-husband on September 11, 2023 while at their Cummings Lodge apartment.

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