In the Rupununi community of Toka, Region Nine, cattle farming is a critical source of income with rustling the bane of the farmers’ existence. Even more frustrating, however, is the fact that the rustlers evade what is, in some interior regions, the frustratingly ‘short’ arm of the law.
It has therefore come as no surprise that Principal Magistrate Alan Wilson, presiding at the Annai Magistrates’ Court was recently celebrated as though he had attained the status of an Indigenous folk hero after he had brought the current ‘run’ of unpunished rustling in the community to a shuddering halt by inflicting two-year jail sentences on three men who, reportedly, had been apprehended ‘red-handed’ in the process of stealing sheep.