Source Credits: Trinidad and Tobago Guardian

Wednesday July 30, 2020

NCRHA boss gets injunction against social media activist by Derek Achong

North Central Regional Health Authority (NCRHA) chief executive officer, Davlin Thomas, has obtained an injunction against a social media activist who allegedly made a series of defamatory posts about him.

In an 11-page decision delivered yesterday, High Court judge Margaret Mohammed ruled that the injunction against Naresh Siewah was warranted to protect Thomas pending the outcome of the case.

“In my opinion, in granting the injunction it would limit any further damages to the claimant’s reputation and restrain or limit on the defendant with respect to matters set out in the Facebook posts,” she said.

“The injunction certainly does not restrict the defendant from commenting on the claimant’s actions with respect to other matters,” she added.

According to the evidence in the case, the offensive posts were made between March and June on a series of Facebook groups.

When Thomas’ lawyers Farai Hove-Masaisai and Jennifer Farah-Tull initially wrote to Siewah threatening legal action, Siewah wrote back begging for forgiveness.

Stating that he was unemployed and could not pay compensation, Siewah said: “Thanks in advance and hope this matter could be resolved privately. Again, I am very sorry for the pain I caused. I regret it very much. I am ashamed and sad. I am depressed also. Life is really, really hard. I plea and beg onto your client to please have mercy and forgive me for my wrong doingings (sic).”

Despite his admission, when Siewah eventually retained a lawyer to defend the case, he claimed that he was not responsible for most of the posts as his account had been hacked for several months.

The trial of the case is expected to take place later this year.

Siewah is being represented by Leon Kallicharan.