At­tor­ney Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al has crit­i­cised what she re­ferred to as ar­cha­ic and op­pres­sive laws of T&T, as it re­lates to tat­toos in law en­force­ment agen­cies.

She was com­ment­ing on High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad’s rul­ing on Tues­day that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice tat­too pol­i­cy is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and ill-ad­vised.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Lutch­me­di­al said the judg­ment of Seep­er­sad in the case of Dil­lion Ram­raj re­in­forces the point that “poli­cies which cur­tail rights and free­doms must have a ra­tio­nal con­nec­tion to pro­tec­tion of the pub­lic in­ter­est.”

In ear­ly 2019, Ram­raj vis­it­ed the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my at St James and was un­suc­cess­ful in his ap­pli­ca­tion to be re­cruit­ed as a mem­ber of the TTPS.

Ram­raj was dis­qual­i­fied from con­sid­er­a­tion be­cause he had a tat­too on his left hand in or around the area be­tween his thumb and in­dex fin­ger.

The tat­too de­picts a small green Shuriken, more com­mon­ly re­ferred to as a nin­ja star. This sym­bol is ap­par­ent­ly syn­ony­mous with nin­jas.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that the facts of the case demon­strat­ed with cer­tain­ty that the tat­too pol­i­cy, in its cur­rent man­i­fes­ta­tion, “is dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and ill-ad­vised.”

He not­ed that the tat­too pol­i­cy in its cur­rent form, stands as an ar­cha­ic, ar­ti­fi­cial ad­min­is­tra­tive bar­ri­er which oc­ca­sions sig­nif­i­cant prej­u­dice.

“Its ex­is­tence and im­ple­men­ta­tion is un­rea­son­able and can­not be jus­ti­fied in a mod­ern de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state,” he said.

Lutch­me­di­al, who was one of the lawyers in Ram­raj’s law­suit, said, “The agen­cies and arms of the State are plagued by many prob­lems, least of which is ap­pear­ance and this fo­cus on pre­serv­ing colo­nial-era norms which are ar­cha­ic and, in some cas­es, op­pres­sive, is as­ton­ish­ing, es­pe­cial­ly through­out the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.”

“While am­mu­ni­tion and oth­er para­pher­na­lia be­long­ing to law en­force­ment is be­ing used in the com­mis­sion of crimes, TTPS is be­fore the court at­tempt­ing to de­fend a pol­i­cy to pro­hib­it re­cruits from hav­ing tat­toos,” she added.

“I have two deeply sym­bol­ic tat­toos on my hands which are al­ways vis­i­ble in court and in Par­lia­ment and it has nev­er af­fect­ed the per­for­mance of my du­ties. It is the man­ner in which I choose to ex­press my­self and my be­liefs, pre­serve mem­o­ries and por­tray ideas,” she said.

She added, “I ex­pect at least hope that go­ing for­ward, that this judg­ment will have the ef­fect of forc­ing pub­lic ser­vice agen­cies to ex­am­ine their poli­cies re­gard­ing dress code and oth­er mat­ters to en­sure that there are no un­rea­son­able and ir­ra­tional en­croach­ments on cit­i­zens’ rights which serve no pur­pose but to keep us stuck in the past.”

She al­so not­ed that there are mat­ters cur­rent­ly be­fore the court where­by the “must be clean shaven” pol­i­cy of the Prison Ser­vice is be­ing chal­lenged by two prac­tic­ing Mus­lims.

Dis­play­ing one of her tat­toos, Lutch­me­di­al ex­plained that it is a “Satyame­va Jay­ate” which comes from a San­skrit mantra, which means “truth alone tri­umphs.”

She said, “My name Jayan­ti is a vari­a­tion which means vic­to­ry. It res­onates with me be­cause I be­lieve in the pur­suit of truth and jus­tice. It’s a re­minder to my­self that in the end the truth wins and those who pur­sue the truth al­so emerge vic­to­ri­ous,” she said. –Re­port­ing by Rhon­dor Dowlat