Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A busi­ness­man who has been wait­ing 14 years for a re­sponse to his re­quest for a Firearm User's Li­cense (FUL) is now su­ing the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams grant­ed leave to Ra­jesh Singh on Mon­day to pro­ceed with his ju­di­cial re­view law­suit chal­leng­ing the Com­mis­sion­er’s fail­ure to give a de­ci­sion.

In the doc­u­ments filed by his at­tor­ney Tara­dath Singh, the busi­ness­man claims the de­lay was un­rea­son­able, il­le­gal and un­fair. He had ap­plied for the FUL in March 2010, and at­tached req­ui­site doc­u­ments.

Singh (R), the own­er of Ra­jesh Con­struc­tion Ser­vices, claims that the com­mis­sion­er’s fail­ure to make a de­ci­sion on his FUL ap­pli­ca­tion with­in a rea­son­able time con­sti­tutes an un­rea­son­able and un­jus­ti­fi­able de­lay.

Through his at­tor­ney, he ar­gued that Sec­tion 17 of the Firearm Act casts the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on the Com­mis­sion­er to de­ter­mine an ap­pli­ca­tion for a FUL.

He fur­ther sub­mit­ted that the pub­lic au­thor­i­ty must do so with­out un­rea­son­able de­lay.

Due to the amount of time that has elapsed, he al­so con­tend­ed that the com­mis­sion­er’s fail­ure to make a de­ci­sion was un­law­ful.

The mat­ter is list­ed for hear­ing in No­vem­ber.