By INDARJIT SEURAJ Thursday, August 20 2009

A Santa Cruz businessman charged with the disposal of a human corpse to prevent the arrest of the killers, was yesterday ordered to stand trial for the crime.

Ravi Boodhoo was granted $150,000 bail with a surety, after Magistrate Avason Quinlan ruled that the State had brought sufficient evidence to make a prima facie case against the accused.

The accused is charged with disposing of the body of Ronald Samlal, whose bloodied body was found over a precipice along the North Coast Road.

He had reportedly been shot to death.

Quinlan, presiding in the Port-of-Spain Fourth (B) Court, on August 11, agreed with submissions by State prosecutor Lee Merry that the defence of duress, claimed by the accused, had to be decided by a jury.

Defence counsel Theodore Guerra, SC, had claimed the defence of duress, arguing that his client had been threatened into doing the crime.

Yesterday, the magistrate formally read the caution to the accused, informing him that he would have to await trial.

Samlal, 42, of Eastern Main Road, San Juan, the owner of a used car business, left home on August 30, 2007, to go to the Inter Commercial Bank in Chaguanas.

When he failed to return home, several calls were made to his cellphone which went unanswered.

That night, relatives received a telephone call from someone who demanded $500,000 for Samlal’s safe release.

He was found murdered two days later.