On 25 September last, while he was on duty, Corporal Mestry was knifed by a young man inside Beau-Bassin police station. He was admitted to hospital and we hope he will soon recover from his wounds. Six days later, 20-year old Avinash Chuttoo was fatally assaulted by a mob outside a local discotheque. Injured by a dagger, he lost his life.

While some people might consider these incidents as isolated ones, claiming with the help of statistics that our crime rate is not that alarming, others might consider them as indicative of a trend in utter disrespect of human life and lawful authorities. Moreover both incidents involve the use of knives as offensive weapons, which is quite frequent nowadays.

A couple of months ago, my neighbour?s son aged 15 was dispossessed of his belongings under the threat of a cutter by two teenagers while he was walking home from school. Another neighbour was attacked by two strangers with the same tool transformed into a weapon when she surprised them stealing from her house. Fearing retaliation, she never reported the case to the police.

Statistics about knife attacks may be flouted by the supposedly trivial cases, which are not reported. Yet, it is only by chance that blade assaults do not turn out to be fatal and it would not be wrong to consider every person armed with a knife as a potential criminal.

Although it remains to be proved, it?s said that more and more people carry a knife or a cutter nowadays. I overheard someone advocating submission in lieu of confrontation as an answer to provocative behaviour, ?dimoun marse ek zoutil zordi zour? (people carry offensive weapons nowadays), he added.

In Scotland, where ?knife culture?, as it is called there, has been so alarming, that the authorities are cracking down on the blade advocating such measures as empowering police to search and arrest people suspected of being armed with a knife and, if this is revealed to be the case, they would ?be handed a custodial sentence unless they could offer a credible explanation? (Eddie Barnes, political editor Scotman.com).

?If you go back to the razor gangs of the 50s, judges started handing out lengthy sentences that helped to bring them to a halt?, argued Charlie Gordon, former Glasgow city council leader, in his plea to discourage people from carrying knives. He added that ?it might well take jailing people for knife possession to reverse this cultural problem?.

It was high time for this country of five million inhabitants to take tough measures as the situation was getting out of hand with more than 1,400 people being hospitalised for blade-inflicted injuries in year 2004-05!

Singapore did not wait to foot such a bill to take tough measures. In this tiny country of 4.3 million inhabitants an upset boyfriend who would approach his girlfriend with a butterfly knife might expect two months? imprisonment as in Kelvin v/s public prosecutor case(1).

More serious, life-threatening cases, might lead to several years in prison and even judicial caning like in the Seng Inn Thye V/S Public Prosecutor case(2).

Should we not, before it?s too late, send a strong signal that ?carrying a knife is illegal and will not be tolerated? in Paradise Island?(3)

ALAIN JEANNOT 1,2 -Things Singaporeans do and what they can expect to get 3 - Carrying a knife is no longer the exception (telegraph.co.uk 01.06.06 shaun bailey)