Geisha Kow­lessar

Laws would soon be in­tro­duced to make it manda­to­ry for gun-tot­ing crim­i­nals to re­ceive strokes if found guilty.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sub­ash Pan­day yes­ter­day said by ear­ly next week two spe­cif­ic bills were ex­pect­ed to be in­tro­duced in Par­lia­ment mak­ing it ab­solute for con­vict­ed crim­i­nals to re­ceive cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment:

He iden­ti­fied the bills as:

�2 Amend­ment to Of­fences Against The Per­son Act Chap­ter 11 (8); and,

�2 amend­ment to the Lar­ce­ny Act, Sec­tion 24.

The bills, ac­cord­ing to Pan­day, were aimed specif­i­cal­ly at tack­ling gun-re­lat­ed crimes and sought to re­duce the in­flux of il­le­gal firearms from the streets. Ac­cord­ing to Pan­day, if a per­son is found guilty of griev­ous bod­i­ly harm by us­ing a firearm he could face a max­i­mum of 20 years in prison. He said If some­one al­so was found guilty of rob­bery by us­ing a firearm he could face a max­i­mum of 15 to 20 years in jail. Strokes, how­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the present law, could on­ly be giv­en if the judge saw it fix, Pan­day ex­plained. He said: "As it is now it is up to the dis­cre­tion of the judge to ad­min­is­ter strokes.

"But we want to change that as soon as pos­si­ble and to make it com­pul­so­ry for strokes to be ad­min­is­tered as part of the pun­ish­ment," a tough-talk­ing Pan­day said dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day. Say­ing he was work­ing with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ramol­gan to "fine­tune" the bills, Pan­day said he was ex­pect­ed to meet with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to have fur­ther dis­cus­sions on the bills.

He added: "The at­tor­ney gen­er­al and my­self still have our work cut out and we will be work­ing on the bills through­out the week. "But we are adamant in erad­i­cat­ing il­le­gal guns from the streets. Once we make a dent in that it would go a long way in re­duc­ing many se­ri­ous crimes, in­clud­ing homi­cides," Pan­day as­sured.

At the week­ly post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing last Thurs­day, Gov­ern­ment in­tro­duced three bills – the Firearms (Amend­ment) Bill, the Bail (Amend­ment) Bill and the An­ti-Gang Bill – al­so to tack­le crime.

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Se­nior coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal has ex­pressed con­cern that the pro­posed bills may arise in a con­flict in the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers be­tween the state and the ju­di­cia­ry. See­ta­hal point­ed out that while Par­lia­ment pre­scribed the laws it was the ju­di­cia­ry that was in charge of sen­tenc­ing and hence to im­pose the nec­es­sary pun­ish­ment re­quired.

She said: "It ap­pears that for Par­lia­ment to man­date to a court to give cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment there would be a con­flict of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. "The right to de­ter­mine what the spe­cif­ic sen­tence in a giv­en mat­ter is the pre­rog­a­tive of the court on­ly, so I won­der how this would work?" See­ta­hal ques­tioned. She said, how­ev­er, there was one ex­cep­tion where in the case of mur­der the penal­ty was al­ready "set" and that was death.