Resh­ma Ra­goonath

A lawyer rep­re­sent­ing a Chi­nese busi­ness­man yes­ter­day was forced to with­draw his client's ap­pli­ca­tion for a spir­it gro­cer's li­cence be­cause the man was un­able to speak or un­der­stand Eng­lish. Bas­deo Mulchan ap­peared for Xui Jie Shi, of Cedar Hill Road, Clax­ton Bay, be­fore the li­cens­ing com­mit­tee, chaired by act­ing deputy Chief Mag­is­trate Ra­jen­dra Ram­bachan.

Shi was ap­ply­ing for a li­cence to sell al­co­hol. How­ev­er, when he went in­to the wit­ness stand and Mulchan ques­tioned him about the pur­pose for the li­cence, he ap­peared to have dif­fi­cul­ty un­der­stand­ing the ques­tion and could not re­spond. Mulchan rephrased the ques­tion but Shi was still un­able to re­spond. Ram­bachan said: "This is a farce. It is far­ci­cal. I think some ac­quain­tance with Eng­lish is nec­es­sary and he has not demon­strat­ed that this morn­ing." Shi's ap­pli­ca­tion was sub­se­quent­ly with­drawn.