A HIGH Court judge has ruled that a series of social media posts targeting a primary school principal amounted to defamation, ordering the operator of a popular online crime page to pay more than $400,000 in damages and costs.

Justice Devindra Rampersad delivered an oral judgment on Monday in favour of Susan Ragoonanan, the principal of Spring Village Hindu School, who sued social media content creator Antonio Ranjitsingh.

Ranjitsingh operates the platform Trini Crime News TT, which the court found had published defamatory material about Ragoonanan across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok between June and August last year.