Attorney blames ‘improper procedure’

“IT SEEMS the operations at this post office show a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing,” was how defence attorney Ian Stuart Brook yesterday described some of the elements in the trial involving former acting post-mistress Gloria Ramnarine. Brook was addressing the mixed jury hearing the trial of Ramnarine, who is accused of stealing $145,703.50 cash from the Rio Claro Post Office.

The attorney said the evidence showed there were several instances which showed that proper procedure was not followed at the southern post office. He submitted that Ramnarine was arrested and charged for the missing money because she was the person then in charge of the post office. He said: “In this viki-vike organisation, where the procedures were no good you can only point a finger at the accused?” Brook likened Ramnarine’s trial to an incident where a quantity of cocaine was found in diplomatic pouches a few weeks ago. “When cocaine was found on certain persons, what were people saying? The Minister of Foreign Affairs should resign. No one suggested for one moment that he put it there, but people found that he was responsible and that he should have resigned,” Brook said.

He added that the State’s case relied on an alleged oral admission as given in evidence that Ramnarine told police she had the keys to the post office at all times in her possession. However, the attorney refuted that allegation, saying that many others had access to the keys, giving them opportunity to make copies of the keys that would give them access to the safes holding the cash. In her address, State attorney Narissa Ramsundar submitted that Ramnarine was solely in charge of the keys from December 4, 1996, to February 3, 1997.

Ramsundar said the accused had exhibited an “incriminating pattern of behaviour” after the discovery of the missing money. She reminded the jury that Ramnarine walked out of her workplace the day she was to hand over to another post-mistress, never to return; that she did not report the money missing to her supervisors; and that the accused became emotional as she told her supervisor that she was trying to raise the cash because she felt “morally responsible” for the missing money. “If she was not culpable, then why were there these levels of anguish?” Ramsundar asked. The case continues today when trial judge Malcolm Holdip will deliver his summation.