The Rights of the Child Commission (RCC) has called for the immediate rescinding of the promotions of Narine Lall and Mohanram Dolai, the policemen who tortured a teen boy at the Leonora Police Station, while saying their elevation is not in the interest of the police force or law and order.
In a statement issued yesterday, the RCC also said the promotions will only serve to further “aggravate and entrench” international concerns about local police excesses, which were highlighted at the recent Universal Nations Human Rights Council Review in Switzerland.
“…The promotion of policemen found linked to the torturing of a child will undermine the process of reform and will moreover corrode public faith in the police to effectively discharge their mandate, centred on service and protection,” the constitutional commission warned, while noting commendable ef-forts have been undertaken to reform the police force.
“These promotions are not in the interest of the [Guyana Police Force], and as a significant corollary, not in the interest of law and order,” it added, while saying it was calling, at minimum, for their immediate withdrawal.
The statement adds to growing pressure for the rescinding of the promotions by the Police Service Commission (PSC) and the police force. Since Stabroek News reported on the promotions, there has been an outpouring of condemnation.
An investigation by the force’s Office of Profes-sional Responsibility (OPR) had found that the two policemen poured methylated spirits on the then 15-year-old’s genital area and set it alight at the Leonora Police Station in 2009.
Lall and Dolai were charged with burning the genitals of the boy with intent to maim, disfigure, disable or cause him grievous bodily harm.
The criminal case against them was subsequently dismissed in the Magistrate’s Court because the boy and other witnesses failed to turn up. However, in 2011, following the filing of a civil action, Justice Roxane George found the ranks liable and after describing the case as constituting torture, awarded the teenager $6.5 million, which the State eventually paid. The torture of the boy prompted international condemnation.
The PSC, which promoted Lall, has since defended its decision, with Chairman Omesh Satyanand saying that the policeman had an unblemished record aside from torturing the boy. “We should not hold something against someone because they would have committed something wrong… even though you have served the time for it and I think the public should understand that. From our record, he has been an outstanding policeman for over two decades and we have taken that into consideration,” Satyanand said last week.
Dolai’s promotion was approved by Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud, who has said nothing so far on the issue.
However, in its statement the RCC said the Commissioners deemed the pronouncement that the two policemen would have undergone sufficient censure as unconvincing. “The Commissioners posited that the malevolence and depravity of torture, constitutes the worst form of human rights infraction,” it said. “Thus, the Commis-sioners concluded that, such malevolence and depravity, when imbued into the promotion equation, abolishes any legitimate and meritocratic prospect of promotion. The Commissioners mentioned that the singularity of the infraction does not in any meaningful way depreciate its depravity,” the Commission added.
Saying it viewed the promotions with alarm, the RCC noted that its Commissioners reviewed the fact that the culpability of the policemen in question is beyond dispute, in view of the findings of the OPR and the decision by Justice George in the civil case. “The decision by Justice George effectively took this matter beyond the confines of the Police Act and showed that the High Court of Guyana found this infraction to be repugnant to the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana as well as to the international treaties to which Guyana is a signatory,” it said.
