A busi­ness­woman from Cara­pichaima has been grant­ed a firearm user’s li­cence (FUL) al­most four months af­ter she won a law­suit over de­lays in de­cid­ing her ap­pli­ca­tion. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the FUL was grant­ed to the woman, whose name was with­held due to per­son­al safe­ty con­cerns raised by her lawyer Varun De­bideen, by act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin, ear­li­er this month. 

In mid-Jan­u­ary, her ju­di­cial re­view law­suit was up­held by a High Court Judge. 

The busi­ness­woman ap­plied for a FUL in 2021. 

She was grant­ed a pro­vi­sion­al FUL, suc­cess­ful­ly un­der­went firearm com­pe­ten­cy train­ing, and sub­mit­ted her cer­tifi­cates to the Firearms Per­mit Unit but she was forced to file a law­suit af­ter she had not re­ceived any feed­back. 

While her lawyers ad­mit­ted that there is no dead­line for de­cid­ing a FUL ap­pli­ca­tion un­der the Firearms Act, they sug­gest­ed that it should be done with­in a rea­son­able time. 

The judge agreed as he is­sued a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the de­lays and gave a dead­line for then-Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to de­cide her ap­pli­ca­tion. 

Af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed to the post in 2023, Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s of­fice was in­un­dat­ed with lit­i­ga­tion over long out­stand­ing FUL ap­pli­ca­tions most of which pre-dat­ed her tenure. 

The lit­i­ga­tion came while the TTPS was do­ing a ma­jor au­dit in­to the is­su­ing of FULs.  

While the re­sults of the au­dit were not made pub­lic, the prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed that it un­earthed sig­nif­i­cant anom­alies in the pro­ce­dure for is­su­ing FULs. 

Many of the cas­es have been de­ter­mined with the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s Of­fice be­ing giv­en dead­lines for ren­der­ing de­ci­sions. 

In late Jan­u­ary, Hare­wood-Christo­pher was ar­rest­ed and de­tained by in­ves­ti­ga­tors led by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Suzette Mar­tin. 

Her ar­rest was in re­la­tion to a probe in­to the pro­cure­ment and im­por­ta­tion of two sniper ri­fles for the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA). 

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) in­formed Hare­wood-Christo­pher of her sus­pen­sion hours af­ter she was re­leased from cus­tody pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions. 

Hare­wood-Christo­pher filed the law­suit chal­leng­ing the le­gal­i­ty of her sus­pen­sion. 

She al­so sought an in­junc­tion over the com­mis­sion’s de­ci­sion to ap­point DCP Ben­jamin to tem­porar­i­ly re­place her while she is on sus­pen­sion. 

While Jus­tice Christo­pher Sieuc­hand re­fused her the in­junc­tion, he still al­lowed her to pur­sue her sub­stan­tive case over her sus­pen­sion. 

Jus­tice Sieuc­hand was sched­uled to de­liv­er his de­ci­sion in the case last week but de­ferred his judg­ment. 

Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract as head of the TTPS comes to an end on May 15, this year.