Adrian Kissoon did not set out to become a symbol of police accountability. He was just a man walking through Barrackpore one March day, making his way to meet friends who were fishing. What happened next turned an ordinary afternoon into a nightmare he would carry for years. According to his account, he was stopped, questioned, and beaten by two police officers before being arrested and thrown into a police vehicle alongside another man. He was taken to the Barrackpore Police Station, locked in a cell, and later brought to a room where he says he was threatened with a cutlass and forced to sign a one-line statement. The violence, as he described it, was relentless: he was slapped, kicked in the face, beaten with the cutlass, and struck in the chest with a gun butt. Two days later, officers searched his home and found nothing. Three days after that, he was formally charged with three robbery offences. He maintained his innocence from the beginning, but that did not stop him from being held for six days, eventually being released on $80,000 bail, and then living under the shadow of criminal charges until they were finally dismissed in January 2016. By then, the damage to his name, his dignity, and his sense of safety had already been done. Like many ordinary citizens who encounter the machinery of the state, he could have simply walked away, grateful that the charges were dropped. Instead, he chose to demand answers and accountability for what had been done to him.
That demand for accountability took the form of a civil lawsuit against the State, filed under the State Liability and Proceedings Act against the Office of the Attorney General. Kissoon’s legal team argued that the officers who arrested him, and the prosecution that followed, had no reasonable grounds to exist in the first place. They contended that the defendant ought to have known there was no proper basis for his arrest or prosecution, and that the officers, acting as agents of the State, failed to carry out a lawful or thorough investigation. There was, they said, simply not enough evidence to justify putting him through the ordeal of a criminal trial. In legal terms, Kissoon was claiming false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and assault and battery. But underneath those formal legal labels was a much more human story: a man stripped of his liberty, subjected to violence and threats, and then forced to defend himself against accusations that should never have been brought. The case was not just about money. It was about whether the powerful institutions of the state could be held to the same standards of fairness and evidence that ordinary citizens are expected to obey. It was about whether a police officer could ruin someone’s life and then simply move on without consequence. And it was about whether the justice system, which had already failed Kissoon once by letting baseless charges linger for years, would fail him again when he asked for redress.
The State, for its part, presented a very different version of events. According to the defendants, officers received a report about a robbery at a supermarket in Barrackpore, during which a shot had been fired. Three victims had been robbed of cash, several packs of cigarettes, and a laptop, and they told police that the stolen items had been placed in a black and yellow knapsack. Acting on that information, officers went to a location in Barrackpore and came across Kissoon and another man hiding in a bushy area near a banana plantation. Kissoon, the State said, was carrying a black and blue knapsack with a yellow pattern, and another knapsack containing cash, a laptop, and cigarettes was found hidden in the bushes. The State maintained that the men were arrested lawfully, cautioned, read their rights, and taken to the police station, where the victims later positively identified them. This, the State argued, amounted to reasonable and probable cause for the arrest and charge. As for why the criminal case collapsed, the State claimed that the matter was dismissed against both men because of a technicality: the non-submission of exhibit forms. That explanation, however, was not enough to convince the court. The arresting officer, whose testimony was crucial to the State’s case, never appeared for cross-examination. The matter was adjourned three times to accommodate him, but he did not show up, without any adequate explanation. As a result, the judge ruled that his witness statement would not form part of the evidence. In effect, the State’s case stood on a foundation that crumbled the moment the key witness failed to appear.
Justice Robin Mohammed, who delivered the judgment, examined the evidence with care and found that the State had failed to establish reasonable and probable cause for Kissoon’s arrest. This was not a borderline case where the police might have made an understandable mistake. The court found that Kissoon’s six-day detention was without lawful authority, which meant that his claim for false imprisonment was established. The court also found that the requirements for malicious prosecution had been met, meaning that the prosecution against him was not merely unsuccessful but was improperly pursued. These findings were significant because they went beyond the narrow question of whether Kissoon was guilty or innocent. They spoke to the conduct of the state itself, to the question of whether officers had acted in good faith or had simply used their power to hold someone without a legitimate basis. The judge made a point that resonates far beyond this single case: a police officer who deprives a person of their liberty must be prepared to account for the grounds on which that deprivation was carried out. When that accounting does not happen, the consequences must fall on the State. That principle is the bedrock of democratic justice. It means that nobody, no matter how powerful their badge or their office, is above the law. It means that every arrest must be justified by evidence, not by suspicion, convenience, or force.
In the end, the court awarded Kissoon substantial damages. The compensatory damages, which were intended to acknowledge the harm he had suffered, were increased to $150,000 to include aggravated damages covering both the false imprisonment and the malicious prosecution. Aggravated damages are designed to recognize the additional hurt, humiliation, and distress caused by the way a wrong was committed, and in Kissoon’s case, the court clearly felt that the way he had been treated demanded more than a token amount. On top of that, the court awarded $40,000 in exemplary damages. Exemplary damages are different in purpose from compensatory damages. They are not meant to compensate the victim but to condemn the conduct of the wrongdoer. The court found that this case fell under the category of oppressive, arbitrary, or unconstitutional action by servants of the State, conduct that the law simply does not tolerate. The six days Kissoon spent in custody, combined with the troubling parts of the prosecution’s evidence, justified this additional punishment. The court also awarded $324 in special damages for transportation, plus interest calculated at $34,046.82. The State was ordered to pay Kissoon’s legal costs of $42,655. Altogether, the award came to more than $200,000. It was a victory not just in financial terms, but in moral terms. The court was saying, in the clearest possible language, that what happened to Adrian Kissoon should never have happened, and that the state must pay for its failure.
Not every part of Kissoon’s case was successful. His claim for assault and battery by the police was dismissed, because the court found that he had not brought any witness to testify about his condition when the alleged assault occurred, and he had not sufficiently tied his injuries to an act by a particular officer. That is a reminder that even in a victorious case, the burden of proof remains on the claimant, and the law demands evidence, not just emotion, to support every allegation. But the main pillars of his case, the false imprisonment and the malicious prosecution, stood strong. For Kissoon, the judgment must have felt like a long-overdue acknowledgement of everything he went through: the fear of that first arrest, the violence of his treatment, the helplessness of being locked in a police cell, the indignity of being charged with crimes he did not commit, and the years of waiting for his name to be cleared. He was represented by attorneys Haresh Ramnath, Alana Rambaran, and Chelsea Stewart, while the Office of the Attorney General was represented by Sasha Sukhram, Candice Alexander, and Amrita Ramsook. But beyond the legal teams and the courtroom arguments, this case is about a citizen who refused to accept injustice quietly. It is a story about how one person’s courage to fight back can help ensure that the state thinks twice before abusing its power. It sends a message to every police officer and every prosecutor that liberty is not a convenience to be set aside when it suits them. It sends a message to every ordinary citizen that the law, imperfect as it may be, can still provide a remedy when the system turns against you. And it sends a message that justice, even when it comes late, is still worth fighting for. Adrian Kissoon’s six days in custody ended years ago, but the effects of those days have lingered. This judgment cannot erase what he endured. It can only offer a measure of redress, and a reminder that in a society governed by law, the state cannot simply do whatever it pleases. For Kissoon, for Barrackpore, and for everyone who believes in fair treatment, that is a win worth more than money.