Derek Achong

A High Court Judge has or­dered the Po­lice Ser­vice to re­turn 20 firearms and a large quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion that were seized by po­lice of­fi­cers from a li­censed firearms deal­er late last year. 

Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad made the or­der on Mon­day as he up­held an in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion from busi­ness­man Towfeek Ali and his com­pa­ny Firearms Train­ing In­sti­tute Lim­it­ed. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion stemmed from a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit filed by Ali and the com­pa­ny over the TTPS’ abil­i­ty, un­der the Firearms Act, to con­duct an “au­dit,” dur­ing which Ali’s per­son­al firearms and am­mu­ni­tion were seized. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the 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.”

Al­though Ali point­ed out that Sec­tion 26 of the leg­is­la­tion al­lows po­lice of­fi­cers to check the busi­ness’ stock and reg­is­ters, he still com­plied with the of­fi­cers’ re­quest for the im­port per­mits for firearms pur­chased by Ali and the com­pa­ny. 

“Cpl Mar­shall then stat­ed that if the same was not pro­vid­ed, she would deal with the mat­ter in an­oth­er way, and that the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the in­tend­ed claimants knew the said way, which was a veiled threat of ar­rest,” at­tor­ney Anan­da Ram­per­sad said. 

Anan­da Ram­per­sad claimed that af­ter the of­fi­cers did not com­plete their search that evening, they said that they would re­turn the fol­low­ing Mon­day. 

She claimed that As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent (ASP) Wayne Brown told her client that po­lice of­fi­cers would be sta­tioned at the build­ing un­til the search was com­plet­ed and they would not be al­lowed to ac­cess the build­ing. 

The of­fi­cers al­so seized the firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and records. 

While Anan­da Ram­per­sad ad­mit­ted that Ali and his em­ploy­ees were al­lowed lim­it­ed ac­cess when the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers re­turned af­ter the week­end, she claimed that the of­fi­cers re­mained sta­tioned at the build­ing un­til Oc­to­ber 27 and im­ped­ed their work.

“This meant that on every day dur­ing the said pe­ri­od, FTI’s per­son­nel would ar­rive at the com­pound and be re­quired to wait in their ve­hi­cles un­til the ar­rival of the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers,” Ram­per­sad said. 

“The in­tend­ed claimants will con­tend that the in­tend­ed de­fen­dants un­law­ful­ly usurped con­trol of their premis­es by their oc­cu­pa­tion and con­trol (in par­tic­u­lar the con­trol of ac­cess) of same,” she added. 

The lawyer claimed that in late Oc­to­ber, the of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants, un­der Sec­tion 6 of the leg­is­la­tion, at the busi­ness and at Ali’s home. 

She ques­tioned the abil­i­ty of the of­fi­cers to utilise the seg­ment of the leg­is­la­tion as she point­ed out that Ali had nev­er been charged with an in­dictable of­fence. 

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, it is not ac­cept­ed there were, are, or could be any rea­son­able ground for be­liev­ing that an of­fence con­trary to that sec­tion had been com­mit­ted for the pur­pos­es of ei­ther ob­tain­ing the war­rants re­ferred here­in, and in any event for the con­tin­ued re­ten­tion of the doc­u­ments, items, and de­vices seized pur­suant there­to,” Ram­per­sad said. 

In de­cid­ing on the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad al­so grant­ed leave for Ali and the com­pa­ny to pur­sue their sub­stan­tive law­suit over the “au­dit”. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the firearms and am­mu­ni­tion were re­turned by the dead­line set by Jus­tice Ram­per­sad. 

The sub­stan­tive case is sched­uled to come up for a hear­ing on April 11. 

Ali and his com­pa­ny are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Be­har­ry­lal, KC, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, and Asif Ho­sein-Shah.