Toorak businessman charged over more than 930 swords, one allegedly sold to a child
Kunal Atul Shah is accused of advertising and selling prohibited weapons with no exemption, no sales records and no identity checks on his buyers.
A Toorak businessman has been charged over the alleged sale of more than 930 swords in Victoria without the exemption the law requires.
Digital marketing operator Kunal Atul Shah is accused of advertising, possessing and selling prohibited weapons without an exemption from Victoria Police, The Age reported on Sunday.
He is also charged with failing to keep records of the sales, failing to check the identity of his buyers, and selling a sword to a child.
Mr Shah is contesting some of the charges.
He co-founded the Melbourne digital agency Rank My Business, which takes clients in Australia, the United States, Britain, the United Arab Emirates and India.
The Herald Sun reported in February that a Toorak man had been charged over the alleged online sale of knives to youth gang members.
Mr Shah is separately accused of benefiting from the alleged deception of multiple landowners in Melbourne’s outer suburbs.
The charges land at the end of a year the State Government spent legislating against the weapon on the street.
Parliament amended the Control of Weapons Act on 19 March 2025 to ban machetes. An interim sales ban followed in May. From 1 September machetes became prohibited weapons, with more than 40 amnesty bins outside 24-hour police stations and penalties of two years’ jail or fines above $47,000.
Swords needed none of it. They were already prohibited weapons.
Under section 5 of the Act it is an offence to manufacture, sell, purchase, display or advertise for sale a prohibited weapon without a Governor in Council exemption or Chief Commissioner approval. The maximum is two years’ jail.
The regulations define a sword as a thrusting, striking or cutting weapon with a long blade and a hilt. It is still a sword if the blade is blunt.
Sections 5A and 5B require the seller to sight identification and write the sale down — the weapon and any serial number, the buyer’s full name, address, phone number and date of birth, evidence of the buyer’s own exemption, the identification produced, and the date and time. A bound book, or a computerised system. Police can demand to see it at any reasonable time.
No one under 18 can buy a prohibited weapon in Victoria. Not a machete. Not a sword.
Victoria Police issued no media release about the charges.
The sword rules were already there — they just ran on a book the seller filled in himself.