Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Guat­a­pa­jaro Road, off Caratal Road, Cu­mu­to, and mem­bers of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty are shak­en by the mur­ders of an el­der­ly cou­ple in their qui­et farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 7.15 pm on Thurs­day, the cou­ple Nasheed Baksh, 67, and his wife Ku­mari Baksh, 60, were found bound and gagged at their home. And while noth­ing valu­able was re­port­ed miss­ing, po­lice sus­pect it was a home in­va­sion.

Ku­mari was an at­tor­ney while her hus­band worked as her law clerk af­ter re­tir­ing as a check­er with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

Po­lice said Nasheed was found down­stairs in the fam­i­ly’s liv­ing room sur­round­ed by blood while his wife was found in a bed­room up­stairs.

Po­lice are await­ing the re­sults of a post-mortem to de­ter­mine how the cou­ple was killed.

Res­i­dents said a rel­a­tive came look­ing for the lawyer and her hus­band on Thurs­day night, af­ter try­ing un­suc­cess­ful­ly to con­tact them on Wednes­day.

Af­ter dis­cov­er­ing the bod­ies, the rel­a­tive screamed out and rushed to the Cu­mu­to Po­lice Sta­tion.

Nasheed’s broth­er Ash­meed, who lives a stone’s throw away on­ly found out about their mur­ders when the me­dia vis­it­ed his home.

He said he was up at 4 am prepar­ing for the day and when the me­dia vis­it­ed just be­fore noon, he had just re­turned home from cut­ting a neigh­bour’s grass.

Shocked by the deaths, he could on­ly ques­tion why this hap­pened.

“That is a most alarm­ing thing! He was a re­al re­li­gious per­son, he more re­li­gious than me. He used to pray five times a day!”

He added he nev­er ex­pect­ed his broth­er and sis­ter-in-law to die the way they did.

A Face­book post, pur­port­ed­ly from one of the cou­ple’s chil­dren said, “Why OMG why. I can’t be­gin to com­pre­hend this nor imag­ine this! It’s just a dream! This hurts so very much but your end­less love meant so much to me! You are the great­est par­ents ever! I love you both so much! RIEP... It’s nev­er ever gonna be the same.”

Neigh­bours were al­so in shock and spoke of the Baksh’s gen­eros­i­ty.

“The cou­ple who passed away, con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, was re­al nice, hum­ble, qui­et, re­al re­spectable peo­ple, very car­ing, shar­ing, they share every­thing, what­ev­er they have,” one neigh­bour said.

The man, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said af­ter liv­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty for over 40 years, this was the first time some­thing like this ever hap­pened.

“When I found out about it, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sleep at all. I found out this morn­ing, around two o’clock. It was shock­ing, it was fright­en­ing... Every­body here is like fam­i­ly.”

Lawyers wor­ried

At­tor­ney Ronald Daniels re­called how the Bak­shs de­plet­ed their sav­ings to pay for him to be­come a lawyer and as­sist­ed in fur­nish­ing his of­fice.

He paid trib­ute to Ku­mari.

“You touched my life in ways I can­not be­gin to put in­to words. For this, I will al­ways love you,” Daniels wrote on Face­book.

Com­ment­ing on the mur­der of the cou­ple, Is­rael Khan, SC, head of the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion, yes­ter­day called for a gen­er­al elec­tion in light of the on­go­ing vi­o­lence. Khan al­so ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with what he said was Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to pro­tect cit­i­zens, say­ing that the State of Emer­gency had proven in­ef­fec­tive.

He added, “It is crit­i­cal that we get crim­i­nals out of the ghet­to of crime and pro­vide them with op­por­tu­ni­ties for em­ploy­ment and so­cial sta­bil­i­ty. Along­side this, we need a ful­ly equipped and ef­fi­cient po­lice ser­vice with a sub­stan­tial bud­get to gath­er in­tel­li­gence.”

The East­ern Lawyers As­so­ci­a­tion paid trib­ute to Ku­mari and her hus­band and called on the au­thor­i­ties to take ur­gent mea­sures to com­bat crime.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so called for the eval­u­a­tion of the risks faced by le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers and im­ple­ment the nec­es­sary se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, es­pe­cial­ly for lawyers in sen­si­tive cas­es.

Pen­sion­er killed

Mean­while, homi­cide de­tec­tives are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mur­der of a pen­sion­er in To­co who was found wrapped in a sheet a day af­ter he was robbed.

Po­lice said Stal­in Ri­ley, 79, of San­ta Cruz, re­turned to his prop­er­ty at To­co Main Road, Ram­panal­gas Vil­lage, Ba­lan­dra, on Thurs­day and re­alised it was bro­ken in­to.

He con­tact­ed the po­lice and found noth­ing was miss­ing.

How­ev­er, Ri­ley’s daugh­ter was un­able to reach him and con­tact­ed the po­lice yes­ter­day morn­ing. When of­fi­cers ar­rived at his home, they dis­cov­ered Ri­ley dead. He was bound and gagged and wrapped in a bed sheet.

A post-mortem is ex­pect­ed to de­ter­mine how he was killed.

—With re­port­ing by

Rhon­dor Dowlat