A 27-year-old man of Cara­po was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody af­ter plead­ing guilty to pos­sess­ing an igua­na out­side of hunt­ing sea­son. He was brought in by of­fi­cers who stopped him dur­ing a mo­bile pa­trol in the Cara­po Dis­trict.
De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease from the TTPS:

A 27-year-old man of Cara­po was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody af­ter he plead­ed guilty to be­ing in pos­ses­sion of an igua­na, out­side of the hunt­ing sea­son.
Paras­ram Seep­aul plead­ed guilty when he ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Ari­ma Third Court Mag­is­trate, Gill. 

On April 1st 2022, Cpl Jef­fers and PC Jack­son of the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad were on mo­bile pa­trol in the Cara­po dis­trict when at around 11:30 pm they ob­served a mo­tor ve­hi­cle ex­it­ing a forest­ed area and the dri­ver act­ing in a sus­pi­cious man­ner. The of­fi­cers stopped the ve­hi­cle and car­ried out a search, where they dis­cov­ered the igua­na along with some agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce in the trunk of the ve­hi­cle. Seep­aul was asked about the items and was un­able to give a law­ful ex­pla­na­tion. 

The of­fi­cers took pos­ses­sion of the items and lat­er sum­moned Seep­aul to court to an­swer three charges:
1. Fail­ure to pro­duce a mem­o­ran­dum of sale in re­spect of the agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce - an of­fence un­der the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Pre­ven­tion Act Chap­ter 10:03
2. Be­ing in pos­ses­sion of an igua­na out­side the hunt­ing sea­son - an of­fence un­der the Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Act Chap­ter 67:01
3. Dri­ving a mo­tor ve­hi­cle with­out a valid in­sur­ance - an of­fence un­der the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act Chap­ter 48:50
PC Jack­son laid the charges.

Seep­aul plead­ed guilty for pos­ses­sion of the igua­na and not guilty on the oth­er two charges. He will reap­pear in court on Au­gust 10th for sen­tenc­ing. Seep­aul, who has oth­er mat­ters pend­ing, was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody. The of­fence car­ries a max­i­mum penal­ty of $5,000

In 2019 the Con­ser­va­tion of Wildlife Act was amend­ed by the gov­ern­ment, due to the dwin­dling igua­na pop­u­la­tion as a re­sult of in­dis­crim­i­nate hunt­ing. 

Al­though the hunt­ing sea­son runs from Oc­to­ber 1st to the last day of Feb­ru­ary, igua­na hunt­ing runs from Oc­to­ber 1st to De­cem­ber 31st.