COUNCILLOR and former Couva/Point Lisas Chamber president Ramchand Rajbal-Maraj and his wife were left traumatised after a bandit broke into their Couva home on Thursday morning and held them up at gunpoint.
The couple was robbed of their grey Hilux, TCS 3017, and other valuables.
A police report said the Carli Bay/California councillor was at his home at Rowan Street, Couva around 9.30 am, when a well-dressed man wearing a rasta hairstyle visited him, ostensibly in his capacity of a justice of the peace.
The "client," however, held him up at gunpoint and ransacked his house, stealing cash and jewellery, before making off with his Hilux.
Newsday was unable to reach Rajbal-Maraj, as the bandit stole his cellphone.
But Couva South MP Rudranath Indarsingh condemned the brutal attack on the family, saying this was the third time, the councillor had been held up and robbed.
“Crime is out of control, yet the acting CoP goes on vacation and the Prime Minister brazenly said he is not going to fire his Minister of National Security, Fitzgerald Hinds, when the murder rate is heading to 600 for the year.”
Indarsingh said this was unacceptable, coming on the heels of two double murders over the weekend, in which a couple – Anita Jagdeo and Amar Randy Ramdass – were shot and left in a vehicle off Factory Road, Chaguanas, and two men found chopped to death at Rivulet Road, Couva.
“I am deeply disgusted and incensed, as MP, that law-abiding citizens of this country, and especially of Couva South, continue to suffer at the hands of the criminal elements who are roving the constituency in a very brazen manner because of the continued failure of the Minister of National Security to arrest and bring about a decline in the number of robberies, home invasions, car-jacking and record murders.
“What is even more appalling is that after the two double murders and about five robberies within the last 24-48 hours, we have a Prime Minister who went to his party’s 50th-anniversary convention and told the country in the most brazen, dismissive, insensitive and callous manner, he will not be firing his Minister of National Security.
“I need to 'turn my guns' on the Prime Minister. The PM is the head of the National Security Council (NSC), he is the leader of this country. As a leader, he too has failed the citizens in terms of providing a safe environment.’
Indarsingh argued, “If the PM has so much confidence in Hinds and himself, as head of the NSC, and of the government of TT, if he is indeed satisfied his government is waging war on crime and criminals, and they are unrelenting and murders are indeed reducing, as well as home invasion, car-jacking – he should seek to get that confidence from the citizenry.
“I urge him to seek a fresh mandate as leader of the country, to see if the citizens have confidence in you, or if they would fire you.”
Failing that, Indarsingh said, “I urge citizens to arm themselves, within the law of the country, to protect themselves, their families and respective communities to keep criminals out.”
Within the past 24 hours, there was also a robbery at Chates Bar-by-the-Pillars at New Settlement, Dow Village, California, and another at Pierre Street, California.
Indarsingh also recalled the November robbery at Central Farms, Milton, Couva, and a robbery at a doubles vendor’s home at Basta Hall. A Hyundai Creta belonging to a police officer who lives at Basta Hall, and runs a bar in Penal, was stolen in November. It was subsequently found scrapped and burnt at the Brian Lara Stadium, Tarouba.
