A 44-year-old self employed builder was sentenced to a fine, after pleading guilty to possession of 44 bullets for a .22 rifle, which he didn't have a license to.

Hon. Mr Justice Niu sentenced Siuta Ngahe to pay $200 pa’anga within 14-days or in default serve three-months imprisonment, on April 28 at the Nuku'alofa Supreme Court.

The Court heard from defense counsel, that in March 2018, the accused sold two pigs from his pigpen at his home in Tokomololo.

The purchaser brought with him a police officer who had a .22 rifle, no doubt duly licensed and bullets to kill the the two pigs, so that the purchaser could take them away.

The police officer had with him a little box in which he had the bullets, and he placed the little box on top of one of the posts at the pen and after he had killed the two pigs, he forgot to take the little box with him. 

The accused did not know he left it there. 


The judge said, on the next morning, when the accused went to feed the remainder of his pigs, he found the little box of bullets and took it inside his house to await the call or return of the police officer to collect his bullets. 

But the police officer never called or came to get them and sometimes later, he moved house. In doing that, the accused put the little box of bullets together with various other stuff into a white bin and stored it.

In March, 2019 Police found the bullets when they carried out a search at his home.

Justice Niu said, if this is what happened, the accused went wrong in treating these bullets, when he found, as if they were any ordinary property of the police officer such as his hat or his bush knife or his coat.

These are bullets and the law strictly regulates bullets and the law says that you must not have them in your possession, unless you have a licence to have them. What you should have done was to inform the police immediately as soon as you found the bullets on top of the fence post to come and get them.

"Worse still, not only did you take it into your house; you did not tell the police, or even the police officer that owned them, that you had them. You thereby possessed them unlawfully in breach of the said law." 


The judge was not convinced that he had come in possession of these bullets inadvertently as submitted by the defense counsel.

"That is because the answer you gave to the police, when they found the bullets in the white bin in your house was that you did not know whose bullets they were. I can't believe that you had forgotten that they belonged to the police officer that had shot the two pigs, if in fact what you have told your counsel was true."

He said, if what the accused said was true, he would have readily informed the police how he had come by them and the police would have checked out his story, with that police officer, and he might not have been charged at all, but he did not.

The judge was therefore not persuaded that a simple order that he be placed on good behavior for a period would be appropriate.

However, he fined the accused and failure to pay within the given period would see him in prison.