One of the 12 men accused of murdering businesswoman Vindra Naipaul-Coolman provided an alibi to police which was not investigated before he was charged.
The allegation was made by Joel Fraser’s lawyer, Ulric Skerritt, as he cross-examined the lead investigator of Naipaul-Coolman’s case, retired Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Nadhir Khan, in the Port-of-Spain High Court yesterday.
Skerritt claimed that Fraser, a former employee of the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA), was at work when state prosecutors contended that Naipaul-Coolman was killed.
While Skerritt stated his client informed homicide detectives of that when he was interviewed months after Naipaul-Coolman was abducted in December 2006, Khan said the message was not passed on to him.
“I am aware he was working and playing football for WASA but no one told me he was working overtime. As far as I am aware football is a seasonal sport,” Khan said.
Skerritt pressed Khan further on his failure to investigate the alibi as he revealed that two other men, who were initially charged for the crime alongside the 12 accused men currently on trial, were freed after their alibis were confirmed by police.
Khan said he could not give any insight into the two former accused men’s experience as the power to discontinue criminal charges lay only with the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
Skerritt also questioned the quality of evidence linking Fraser to the crime, as he said his client was only mentioned in a statement of the State’s main witness Keon Gloster, who has since recanted his evidence.
Although Khan rejected Skerritt’s criticism of the evidence against Fraser, he could not point to any other statement which implicated him (Fraser), apart from Gloster’s claims.
When asked to give an overview of the documents and evidence gathered in his investigation which were presented to the DPP before the charges were laid against the accused men, Khan, who retired from the Police Service in 2010, admitted he had not read the case file in its entirety.
“Because of the volume of documents in that file and the time factored for me to complete it, it was not possible for me to read every single document before I took it to DPP,” Khan said.
Naipaul-Coolman was abducted from her home at Radix Road, Lange Park, Chaguanas, on December 19, 2006. A $122,000 ransom was paid by her family but she was not released and her body has never been found.
State prosecutors contend that the former Xtra Foods chief executive was held captive at a house in Upper La Puerta, Diego Martin, before she was eventually killed.
Gloster, who claimed he witnessed the murder, testified in the trial and claimed he was coerced into signing a series of statements which implicated the accused men, most of whom are his relatives. He was deemed a hostile witness for the State and his statements were read to the jury.
Khan’s cross-examination will continue when the trial resumes on Monday.