Sir, 

On February 3rd, your inspectors’ heavy boots stomped into the house of a hapless couple – Hassenjee and Fareenah Ruhomally, who were dragged kicking and screaming to your barracks where they spent the night in the comfort of your cells. As if that humiliation was not enough, you apparently had both of them stripped naked in front of your officers. 

You must have acted – with amazing celerity, I must say – on information given to you by Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Housing and Lands, Hajj, Islamic Affairs and What not Showkutally Soodhun. In his formal statement to your officers, the latter must have accused the couple of having shared on their Facebook page false news or a fabricated memo, which stated that the minister of everything had not settled a bill at the Apollo Bramwell Hospital. 

With the same efficiency, Adeela and Laina Rawat were summoned to the police station by your good services for questioning. 

When a video was shared on Hassenjee Ruhomally’s wall, there was another statement to the police by Soodhun, naturally followed by another prompt reaction as your heavy-handed men left everything behind and rushed again to arrest Ruhomally. There followed a hospitalisation, a heart operation and three stents! While the patient was recovering from the general anaesthetic and the aftermath of the operation, your cops, according to our information, barged into the Intensive Care Unit to question him, in a room where no visits are allowed and where no one – except your cops, it would seem – is allowed in with their shoes on. 

You treated the matter as if it was the biggest threat faced by the citizens of this country. You did not independently check for yourself whether the accusations were founded or not. 

Now that the unsettled bill, amounting to about Rs400,000, written off because – it clearly states – Soodhun is a VIP, made its way to l’express and was published because it is of public interest, I would like to bring the following to your kind attention: 

• Section 297 of the Criminal Code of Mauritius: False and malicious denunciation in writing, states, “Any person who makes a false and malicious denunciation in writing against any individual to any officer of justice or to any officer of police, whether administrative or judicial, shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years and a fine not exceeding 100,000 rupees.” 
• Section 298 of the same code: Effecting public mischief reads, “Any person who knowingly makes to a police officer a false statement in writing concerning an imaginary offence shall commit the offence of effecting a public mischief and shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years and to a fine not exceeding 100,000 rupees.” 

Since Soodhun knew that he had been hospitalised and since he deliberately gave a police statement in which he accused the couple – directly or indirectly, semantics are not important here – of having forged a document he knew was genuine, I am hereby requesting you to initiate an investigation into the matter under the two sections mentioned above. I hope you will act with the same zeal as you did when you arrested MP Shakeel Mohamed on the basis of “solid proof” that the court immediately dismissed as ludicrous. I hope you will act with the same celerity as you did when you arrested Ish Sookun – who is still challenging you to produce one piece of evidence against him. And I sincerely hope you will act with the same promptness as in the Navin Ramgoolam/Hassam Vayid/Yetamani Gujadhur case where, dismissing the provisional charges this week, Magistrate Meenakshi Gayan-Jaulimsing openly wondered how you could possibly arrest and accuse the applicants of having “committed an offence of conspiracy by failing to follow established procedures when the police cannot even tell what the true and proper procedure… is”. Ouch! 

For the sake of fairness, I hope, therefore, that you will act as promptly as you did in the Ruhomally case. 

Please accept, Sir, the assurance of my highest respect. 

Touria Prayag

Citizen of the Republic of Mauritius

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