DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achon@guardian.co.tt

A firearms deal­er has won his law­suit against the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, over a de­lay in mak­ing de­ci­sions in re­la­tion to his two ap­pli­ca­tions to im­port am­mu­ni­tion made last year.

In a re­cent judg­ment, High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran up­held the ju­di­cial re­view law­suit brought by Towfeek Ali and his com­pa­ny the Firearms Train­ing In­sti­tute Lim­it­ed.

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran ruled that the con­tin­ued fail­ure to make a de­ci­sion in re­la­tion to the ap­pli­ca­tions, sub­mit­ted on June 28, last year, was un­law­ful on the ba­sis of un­rea­son­able and in­or­di­nate de­lay.

Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran gave Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher 28 days in which to ren­der de­ci­sions about the out­stand­ing ap­pli­ca­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Ali and his com­pa­ny wrote to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) af­ter they did not re­ceive a re­sponse to the ap­pli­ca­tions, which usu­al­ly take one month to ap­prove.

Al­most two months lat­er, TTPS le­gal of­fi­cer Nao­mi Her­bert re­spond­ed and re­quest­ed two weeks to as­cer­tain the sta­tus of the ap­pli­ca­tions.

Ali and his com­pa­ny filed the case af­ter Her­bert failed to re­spond.

In de­fence of the case, Hare­wood-Christo­pher claimed that in June, last year, her pre­de­ces­sor act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob took the de­ci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly halt the pro­cess­ing of Firearm Im­port Per­mits and she con­tin­ued it (the de­ci­sion) af­ter she was ap­point­ed in De­cem­ber.

She claimed that the de­ci­sion was based on de­fi­cien­cies in the TTPS in­ter­nal process­es for grant­i­ng such per­mits, al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the grant­i­ng of Firearm User’s Li­cences (FULs), the gen­er­al state of gun vi­o­lence in T&T and the fail­ure of some firearm deal­ers to pro­vide rel­e­vant da­ta as re­quired.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran ruled that the pre­vi­ous time frames for ap­proval were not de­fin­i­tive.

“It may be that these ap­pli­ca­tions were not con­sid­ered prop­er­ly or that cir­cum­stances have changed which war­rant a more care­ful and de­tailed con­sid­er­a­tion,” he said.

While Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran not­ed that the de­ci­sion to halt the pro­cess­ing of ap­pli­ca­tions may have been ini­tial­ly jus­ti­fied, he ques­tioned why Ali and the com­pa­ny were not in­formed.

“It is the court’s view that this sim­ply isn’t good enough,” he said.

“While it is im­prac­ti­cal and un­de­sirous for the De­fen­dant to in­di­cate that steps be­ing tak­en and yet to be tak­en to put things in place to bol­ster the process of grant­i­ng li­cences, it is still in­cum­bent on a de­ci­sion mak­er, where he can­not prac­ti­cal­ly make a de­ci­sion, es­pe­cial­ly where the de­ci­sion to pro­vide re­al­is­tic es­ti­mates as to when a de­ci­sion might be made,” the judge added, as he not­ed the over a year de­lay was un­jus­ti­fi­able.

In the case, Ali and the com­pa­ny were seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for breach­es of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and for the de­lay, which Ali claimed had a dire ef­fect on his busi­ness.

Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran ruled that their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were not breached. He al­so in­di­cat­ed that they could on­ly pur­sue com­pen­sa­tion for the de­lay af­ter the ap­pli­ca­tions are de­ter­mined by Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

“Un­til this is done, the Claimants are sim­ply not en­ti­tled to claim for dam­ages and it is there­fore pre­ma­ture at this stage for them to make such a claim,” he said.

Ear­li­er this year, Ali and his com­pa­ny filed a sep­a­rate ju­di­cial re­view law­suit over the abil­i­ty of the TTPS, un­der the Firearms Act, to con­duct an “au­dit”, dur­ing which Ali’s per­son­al firearms and am­mu­ni­tion were seized.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in that case, on Oc­to­ber 8, last year, a group of po­lice of­fi­cers vis­it­ed Ali’s busi­ness and in­formed him that they were there to con­duct an “au­dit”.

On Jan­u­ary 24, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad grant­ed an in­junc­tion or­der­ing the TTPS to re­turn Ali’s per­son­al firearms and am­mu­ni­tion pend­ing the out­come of the case.

Af­ter the han­dover was com­plete, Ali’s lawyers wrote to TTPS Le­gal Of­fi­cer Adi­ta Ram­du­lar not­ing that 500 of the 1,230 rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion that was seized from her client were not re­turned.

That case is sched­uled to go to tri­al next year.

Ali and the com­pa­ny were rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Be­har­ry­lal, KC, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Asif Ho­sein-Shah, and Nyree Al­fon­so.

The Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er was rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Tama­ra Toolsie, and Anala Mo­han.