by An­na-Lisa Paul

A Bar­rack­pore busi­ness­man who is a li­censed firearm user was ar­rest­ed and charged by po­lice on Sun­day and his weapon seized af­ter he was found reck­less­ly dis­charg­ing it as his friend uri­nat­ed at the side of the road.

The in­ci­dent took place around 5.45 pm on Au­gust 14, along the East­ern Main Road (EMR), Man­zanil­la.

Cpl Ma­haraj along with PCs Singh and Samuel of the Man­zanil­la Po­lice Sta­tion were on mo­bile pa­trol pro­ceed­ing along the EMR when they saw a white Kia Sportage parked in a track lead­ing off the main road with both front doors open when they heard what sound­ed like a gun­shot.

As the of­fi­cers turned in­to the track be­hind the van, they saw a woman hur­ried­ly at­tempt­ing to get in­to the front pas­sen­ger seat.

They al­so ob­served the 59-year-old busi­ness­man of Union Hall, San Fer­nan­do fid­get­ing with the waist­band of his pants and at­tempt­ing to get in­to the dri­ver’s seat.

As the of­fi­cers ap­proached the ve­hi­cle and or­dered the oc­cu­pants out and searched them, they found a gun con­tain­ing five rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion, on the dri­ver’s per­son.

In­di­cat­ing he was the hold­er of a Firearms Users Li­cense (FUL), the of­fi­cers con­firmed the cre­den­tials and found it to be cor­rect.

How­ev­er, as they con­tin­ued to ques­tion the busi­ness­man, PC Singh re­al­ized he had some­thing clenched in his right hand.

Open­ing his palm to re­veal a 9 mm spent shell which he hand­ed over to PC Singh, the of­fi­cer said a gun­shot was heard ear­li­er and cau­tioned the busi­ness­man in ac­cor­dance with the Judge's Rules to which the man said, "Sir my friend was pee­ing and long time I ain't go on the range so I buss a shot to hit a tree."

Asked to point out ex­act­ly where he dis­charged the weapon, the busi­ness­man point­ed to a spot on the road­way.

PC Singh then in­formed the busi­ness­man that it was an of­fence to dis­charge a firearm with­in 40 me­tres of a road­way.

The busi­ness­man was lat­er cau­tioned, ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion.