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Monday, May 12, 2025

Farmer wins lawsuit over delay in gun licence application

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663 days ago
20230718
High Court Judge  Devindra Rampersad

High Court Judge Devindra Rampersad

A poul­try farmer has suc­ceed­ed in his law­suit over a two-and-a-half-year de­lay in de­cid­ing on his firearm user’s li­cence (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tion.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment on Mon­day, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad up­held Shi­va Boodram’s ju­di­cial re­view law­suit against the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, in ear­ly 2018, Boodram sub­mit­ted the ap­pli­ca­tion as he claimed that he need­ed a firearm to ex­ter­mi­nate pests such as snakes, mon­goos­es, and preda­to­ry birds which he claimed were at­tack­ing his live­stock.

Boodram filed his ju­di­cial re­view law­suit and was grant­ed leave to pur­sue it by Jus­tice Ram­per­sad in April 2021.

Al­most two weeks lat­er, the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in­formed him that his ap­pli­ca­tion was de­nied over his fail­ure to pro­vide ev­i­dence of the fi­nan­cial loss­es he al­leged­ly in­curred due to pests. It al­so con­tend­ed that the pests could be ex­ter­mi­nat­ed with­out a li­cenced firearm.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad stat­ed that the Firearms Act did not pre­scribe a time lim­it for de­cid­ing on FUL ap­pli­ca­tions but not­ed that the In­ter­pre­ta­tion Act re­quired that pub­lic au­thor­i­ties de­cide on ap­pli­ca­tions be­fore them in a rea­son­able time.

He stat­ed that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice failed to pro­vide ev­i­dence of what caused the de­lay in pro­cess­ing Boodram’s ap­pli­ca­tion.

“Con­sid­er­ing the au­thor­i­ties re­ferred to by the par­ties on the In­ter­pre­ta­tion Act and what is con­sid­ered a rea­son­able time, in the ab­sence of vi­tal de­tails of the process as to the dates of the move­ment of the ap­pli­ca­tion through the stages sup­port­ed by co­gent ev­i­dence, which was in the de­fen­dant’s purview, the un­ex­plained de­lay stands to be le­git­i­mate­ly viewed as de­cid­ed­ly un­rea­son­able,” Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said.

He al­so re­ject­ed claims that the de­lay was par­tial­ly due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Not­ing that pub­lic health re­stric­tions for the pan­dem­ic be­gan in March 2020, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said, “There were there­fore ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 months when this mat­ter seems to not have been ad­dressed be­fore the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and re­stric­tions. No ex­pla­na­tion was giv­en for that.”

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad made no find­ings in re­la­tion to the de­nial of Boodram’s ap­pli­ca­tion as such was not un­der chal­lenge in the case.

As part of his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad or­dered the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice to pay Boodram’s le­gal costs for the law­suit.

Boodram was rep­re­sent­ed by Kent Sam­lal and Ab­del Mo­hammed while Keron Ramkha­lawan rep­re­sent­ed the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice.


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