But more than a week after the arrest of a high profile accused, if the barrage of questions asked by the defense is met with a response which hardly contains the barrage, the case, strictly in legal terms, stands on an interesting axis which can spin in favour of the accused.
Unfortunately, in the middle of all this is a minor girl (till the court finally concludes otherwise to declare her 18 and above) who has cried out loud that she found herself without clothes and with blood on her in the home of MLA Babush Monseratte. Many of the things she has said do not quite add up and discrepancies show. But the wheels of justice are oiled only by luck but derailed by great defense lawyers. The victims state of confusion during her trauma, leading to contrary statements will not be match in front of the accused who to is seeking justice in the manner he sees it and will pull out all stops pick up even fragments that defy the rape and trafficking charge. And it is this battle that Monseratte’s team appears to be winning in this very early stage. However one must add, that this is legal battle of wits he is scoring, because the prosecution simply needs to sharply think on its feet to counter what appears to be points which are strengthening Monseratte’s defense.
His team has very shrewdly scored off the usual arguments every investigating agency puts forward to deny bail to the accused and extend custody- accused not cooperating or having being on the run from the law or he having the potential to destroy evidence. Monseratte drove to the Crime Branch the day after the complaint was registered and literally gave himself up. Secondly, most of the evidence had been collected from the supposed scene of crime and statements recorded. Hence the argument that he may try to destroy evidence may not hold.
Meanwhile, his defense lawyers have managed to place what appears to be very strong -though not entirely convincing- arguments to counter the victim’s line of complaints. While we have reported earlier and further detailed them in our front page reportage in this edition, two of those need to be discussed yet again. 1) During the fateful night of March 8 through to the morning after, March 9, the victim made 12 outgoing calls and sent four messages between 7 pm and 9 pm, and made a call the next morning at 9 am. While the defense questions how she could be making those calls, at the time when she was allegedly victimized by Monseratte, there are still gaps in this theory. If her last call or message was made at 9 pm at night, that still means for 12 hours there was no activity on the phone till she made a call at 9 am the next morning. This is long enough for an act of alleged rape to have been committed. It is also possible that Monseratte reached his house around 9 pm while the victim was already brought there. 2) The next point of the defense is that she apparently stole cash from Monseratte’s Hallmark store on March 14, which is a week after the alleged rape took place. This argument does have weight since it is not logical that a rape victim would turn up at her former work place owned by her aggressor, the alleged rapist. But here the defense has relied on WhatsApp messages between the victim and her colleagues to prove this. This is not enough to establish beyond doubt if she was indeed at the store where she worked. Only a detailed CCTV analysis will be able to prove this.
As it so often happens, legal minds will play this game in court and a battle of wits, and yes sadly, the force of connections will determine the manner in which the investigations progresses.
As Herald has always maintained, we have a very young girl here who is a victim. We cannot portray her as a pawn used by Monseratte’s opponents or worse still, a villain herself, just because that is the view of a powerful political support base of the accused. If that was the case, there would be no law applicable to either Godfathers or Robin Hoods.
At the same time, very important points raised by the defense need strong counter replies by the Crime Branch or this case will soon slip beyond their reach.
