“Everything belongs to me,” stated 23-year-old Imran Khan at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court yesterday shortly before he was jailed for five years and ordered to pay a fine of $55,000 for cultivating cannabis plants and being in possession of a shotgun without a firearm licence.
Khan appeared before Magistrate Hazel Octive-Hamilton jointly charged with 48-year-old Razac Alli, who faced an additional charge of unlawful possession of ammunition, and was remanded to prison.
Khan pleaded guilty to both charges of cultivating a prohibited plant and unlawful possession of a firearm, while Alli pleaded not guilty to those charges as well as the charge of unlawful possession of ammunition.
Khan admitted but Alli denied that on January 15 at their Berbice home they cultivated cannabis plants and that they were found with a 16-gauge shotgun, without being the owners of a firearm licence. Alli also denied that on the same day and place he had six 16-gauge cartridges without being the owner of a firearm licence.
Attorney-at-law Glenn Hanoman, who represented Alli, applied for reasonable bail for him, arguing that the court should take into consideration Khan’s admission of the offences. He stated that Khan had also admitted to being the owner of the ammunition for which he was not charged. He noted that he was instructed that it was only three small cannabis plants that Khan had admitted to cultivating.
In his bail application for Alli, Hanoman stated that his client is a well-known vegetable
farmer.
He went on to say that prior to his client’s court appearance yesterday he had been held in an excess of 72 hours by the police.
The lawyer also requested that the court take into consideration that instead of the police taking his client to the Springlands Magistrate’s Court that is currently sitting and has jurisdiction over the matter, they brought him all the way to Georgetown.
However, Prosecutor Shellon Daniels objected to the bail application on the grounds that the offences are only bailable if special circumstances are attached to them and the defence had presented none to the court.
She stated further that “an alleged oral statement was made by Alli after the allegations were told to him under caution and he had admitted to the offences.”
Daniels said that on the day in question the police from the Narcotics Branch, Eve Leary, went to Alli’s Berbice home where they met with Alli and Khan. She said that the police subsequently conducted a search on the premises where the firearm was found in the presence of Alli and Khan.
She said that the police then proceeded to search their farm at the said address and again in their presence they found the cannabis plants being grown among some cassava and eddo plants.
Khan then told the court that Alli had given him the farm to manage and that Alli would come occasionally to check on it.
“Everything that they find is me own….nothing ain’t belong to he (Alli),” stated Khan.
He said that he had bought the shotgun from a Dutchman “cause I dey wasting me energy and plants when wild hogs and other animals would damage meh stuff.”
He stated that regarding the cannabis charge “a friend gimme de seeds and he sey that they was tomato seeds so I just throw them in de farm fuh them fuh grow…I didn’t know was wuh seeds he really gimme.”
“I beg fuh lenience cause ah young and is de first time I ever do something like this,” pleaded Khan.
The magistrate then refused bail for Alli and ordered the matter to be transferred to the Springlands Magistrate’s Court for February 4.
