By |Travis Chase | HGP Nightly News|
DIAMOND, EAST BANK DEMERARA – The High Court-level legal debate surrounding Guyana’s archaic blasphemy laws reached a swift conclusion on Friday at the Diamond Magistrate’s Court. Magistrate Wanda Fortune completely dismissed the blasphemous libel charge against popular social media personality Daniel Wharton, widely known as “Baby Skello,” ruling that the prosecution’s charge was entirely “bad in law.”
Wharton had been criminally charged under Section 347(1) of the Criminal Law (Offenses) Act following a controversial TikTok video that allegedly contained highly offensive references to the Hindu deity, Mother Lakshmi Maa.
The dismissal hinged on a compelling constitutional and common law argument advanced by the defense team. Led by attorney Everton Singh-Lammy, the defense argued that the offense of blasphemous libel—which remains preserved under Guyana’s colonial-era statutes and is deeply rooted in English common law—applies strictly to the protection of the Christian religion.
To anchor this position, Singh-Lammy relied on landmark English precedents that heavily influence Guyanese jurisprudence, including Whitehouse v. Gay News Ltd and R v. Chief Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Choudhury. These historical cases firmly established that common-law blasphemy laws were exclusively designed to protect Christian tenets and could not be extended to cover other major world religions, including Hinduism or Islam.
Faced with these legal realities, Magistrate Fortune agreed with the defense’s submissions. The court found that because the statutory framework of Section 347 cannot legally or structurally apply to allegations concerning the Hindu faith, the charge brought forward by the state was fundamentally defective and unenforceable.
With the legal basis of the prosecution crumbled, Magistrate Fortune threw out the matter, shielding Wharton from further criminal prosecution under that specific charge.
Daniel Wharton was represented by a robust legal team, including prominent defense attorneys Glen Hanoman, Everton Singh-Lammy, and Angel Stephens.
While Wharton’s legal team is celebrating a technical victory, the case has reignited intense public debate in multi-cultural Guyana regarding the need to modernize the country’s penal code. Legal scholars note that the ruling exposes a massive discrepancy where non-Christian religions lack equal protection under traditional blasphemy statutes, pointing to an urgent need for legislative reforms that address religious intolerance without relying on outdated colonial laws.
