Betel nut seller told to pay K300

By HEZRON KISING
A COURT has ordered a man to pay a K300 fine or face six months imprisonment for selling betel nut in a public place.
Kasi Marame, 36, from Mul village in Gumine, Chimbu, appeared before Lae District Court Magistrate Tera Dawai charged with trading in a public place.
Marame admitted the charge and told the court that he had been a volunteer cleaner at Lae’s Main Market for eight years.
“The market manager, city council manager, police at the market all know me that I work without pay,” he said.
“Therefore, they allow me to sell betel nuts for my bus fare and other daily needs.
“I was cleaning up the place (market) with my shovel, wheelbarrow and rake when police apprehended me.”
Magistrate Dawai told him that everyone, regardless of their status or relationship with authorities, was not above the law and needed to abide by it.
“As a magistrate I am also not a new person to the law, as well as the police prosecutor Sr Sgt Vincent Suakai.
“But, the law doesn’t know me as a magistrate or him as a prosecutor.
“If tomorrow I did something wrong and police come and arrest me, I am just like everybody else, not above the law.
“No one is above the law,” she said.
“Law doesn’t know anybody, it doesn’t have ears, eyes, mouth and doesn’t have feelings.
“But when you break it then it will hold you responsible for your action.” Police said Marame was hiding from the close circuit television (CCTV) installed at the market and selling 135 betel nuts and mustard when police apprehended him.
Marame has been arrested on several occasions previously but only warned and released since he was an elderly man.
But police allege that he took advantage of that and kept selling things until his arrest.