Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

An­i­mal rights ac­tivist, Maris­sa Ram­nath, has filed a for­mal com­plaint with the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) against the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice over what is be­lieved to be fraud­u­lent ap­proval of a per­mit to set off fire­works in the cap­i­tal on In­de­pen­dence day.

In a let­ter ad­dressed to the PCA head, Adam West, on De­cem­ber 13, Ram­nath's at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh ex­plained that they wrote the of­fice nu­mer­ous times over the month of Au­gust ex­press­ing con­cerns over the fire­works show and its im­pact on an­i­mals and the vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety. How­ev­er, up to Au­gust 26, the of­fice main­tained that no such ap­provals were giv­en for the fire­works dis­play nor were there any re­quests made to host such a dis­play. He said that in re­spond­ing to fur­ther cor­re­spon­dence in light of ad­ver­tise­ments in the pub­lic do­main claim­ing oth­er­wise, the of­fice re­spond­ed on Au­gust 30 to in­di­cate that per­mis­sion was in fact giv­en to dis­charge fire­works to a re­quest made on Au­gust 10.

"It is our re­spect­ful opin­ion that some ma­nip­u­la­tion may have tak­en place with re­gard to my client’s cor­re­spon­dence and the re­ceipt of the ap­pli­ca­tion for per­mis­sion in or­der to avoid any le­gal chal­lenge to per­mis­sion. We are of the view that the al­leged ap­pli­ca­tion may have been cre­at­ed and/or filed and/or ap­proved on­ly af­ter our client’s re­peat­ed com­plaints and con­cerns that an en­ti­ty was plan­ning, mo­bi­liz­ing and pro­mot­ing a fire­work dis­play with­out an ap­proved ap­pli­ca­tion for same or in­ten­tion­al­ly con­cealed from my client," Tak­lals­ingh said.

Tak­lals­ingh said it is al­so their be­lief that the sit­u­a­tion amounts to po­lice cor­rup­tion and re­quest­ed that it be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

"This mat­ter ought to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed as it is our view that this il­le­gal and/or dis­hon­est and/or fraud­u­lent con­duct on be­half of the po­lice ser­vice may re­sult in a loss of in­tegri­ty of the ap­pli­ca­tion process as well as re­sult­ing in a loss of trust of the gen­er­al pub­lic in the po­lice ser­vice be­cause it seems like on­ly af­ter my client pressed the of­fice of

the CoP and point­ed out a po­ten­tial il­le­gal fire­works dis­play sev­er­al times through cor­re­spon­dence on var­i­ous oc­ca­sions, an ap­pli­ca­tion ap­peared out of thin air," he said.