After spending five years on remand, four men were on Friday freed of a murder charge by High Court Navindra Singh, due to insufficient evidence.
The men Vikash Persaud, Mustafa Douglas, Rafeed Haniff, and Rajkumar Singh were on trial at the Demerara High Court over the murder of 30-year-old Christopher Swamy of Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara.
The men had denied murdering Swamy on October 21, 2018.
According to a Police report, on the day in question at 01:30hrs, Swamy, his wife, sister-in-law along with 28-year-old Rawle Williams and his wife, Marica were liming and imbibing in front of their Mon Repos home when they were attacked by two masked bandits, one of whom was armed with a gun.
It is alleged that the suspects relieved Marica of her cell phone and cash, beat Rawle to the head and then shot Swamy in the left region of his chest.
The bandits fled the scene and Swamy and Rawle were rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital, where Swamy was pronounced dead on arrival.
The men were represented by attorneys Madam Kissoon, Kezia Williams, Dexter Todd, Jevon Cox and Tracy Marks
The attorneys had submitted that the defence had no case to answer since the prosecutor failed to establish a case against their clients.
Justice Singh agreed with the no-case submission of the defence and directed the jury to return a formal verdict of not guilty.
The Judge criticised the police investigation as “very poor” and noted that some of the evidence should not have even advanced past the preliminary inquiry stage.
The News Room was made to understand that Rajkumar Singh will remain in custody since he has another murder case in relation to the fatal stabbing of another inmate last year while on remand at the Lusignan Prison.
