R v N (2021-2022)

Selva Ramasamy QC was instructed to represent a businessman who was charged with failing to provide police with the PIN for one of his mobile telephones.

During the course of a police investigation he had been served with a s.49 RIPA notice requiring him to provide the PIN. The police investigation had been delayed, and he maintained that he was unable to remember the PIN, and that although he had made a record of the PIN, that record had been lost. Defence submissions identified defects in the s.49 notice. The police accepted that they had made errors with the notice. They issued a new s.49 notice and charged the defendant under s.53 RIPA. The defence then challenged the process the police had followed in relation to the new s.49 notice, and disclosure requests were made which pressed the prosecution as to the precise part/s of Schedule 2 RIPA which the police had relied on in issuing that notice. Thereafter, the prosecution offered no evidence in the case.

Selva Ramasamy QC was instructed by David Hardstaff of BCL.

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