SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Still shak­en from the re­cent vi­o­lent in­va­sion of his home, am­putee Farz Mo­hammed is thank­ing God for spar­ing his life.

“I could have been killed,” he said, his voice trem­bling as he re­count­ed the 20 min­utes of ter­ror he and his fam­i­ly en­dured from three rob­bers - two armed with guns and the third with a ba­ton—at their Carlsen Field home last Mon­day.

“Those fel­las had no mer­cy,” he said

In ad­di­tion to be­ing beat­en, the thieves threat­ened to chop off Mo­hammed’s right hand.

“I done lose a foot al­ready ... you could imag­ine hear­ing them say they go chop off my hand,” said Mo­hammed, who lost his right leg to di­a­betes in 2019.

“It was fright­en­ing ... hor­ri­fy­ing to know you’re help­less and these men com­ing in your house to beat you and take what you work hard for.”

In the last two months, sev­er­al Carlsen Field res­i­dents have been at­tacked by mask-wear­ing in­trud­ers at their homes.

The is­sue was raised by the pres­i­dent of the Goat and Sheep Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan, whose wife was robbed by a gang of gun-tot­ing men on March 8.

Mo­hammed, 55, said his fam­i­ly was am­bushed min­utes af­ter get­ting out of their beds.

“It was around 6.30 am. We heard the dogs bark­ing but we did not see any­one out­side,” he re­called

When his son Fawz Mo­hammed, 25, and work­er Rakesh Ram went out­side to find out the rea­son for the dogs’ per­sis­tent bark­ing, they were am­bushed by the three men who were hid­ing un­der a stair­case.

The in­trud­ers be­gan kick­ing, punch­ing, hit­ting and drag­ging the men in­to the house. Up­on hear­ing the com­mo­tion, Mo­hammed, who has a pros­thet­ic leg, ran in­to the bed­room where his wife Kisoon­daye Sama­roo, 46, was asleep and called the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion for help.

“These crim­i­nals were re­lent­less they be­gan kick­ing down the door to get to me and my wife. Every­thing hap­pened so fast,” he said

Up­on gain­ing en­try, the ban­dits un­leashed ter­ror on the fam­i­ly. Sama­roo was dragged off the bed and or­dered to sit on the floor while the rob­bers beat the three men.

Mo­hammed said, “It was licks ever­more. They told me they know I does go to the bank on Mon­days and de­mand­ed that I hand over the mon­ey. I emp­tied my pock­et and gave them a small pouch con­tain­ing some cash.”

Mo­hammed col­lects a dis­abil­i­ty grant every month.

The rob­bers told him they were paid to rob his fam­i­ly.

De­ter­mined to find more valu­ables, the crim­i­nals cut the elec­tri­cal con­nec­tions to Mo­hammed’s CCTV cam­eras and be­gan to ran­sack the house but did not find any­thing of val­ue.

Just when Mo­hammed thought the worst was over, one of the ban­dits be­gan hit­ting his son on his head with a gun butt.

“They burst open his head ... and then aimed their guns at me ... telling my son if he didn’t say where the rest of the mon­ey was he would not see me alive again. My son kept telling them we gave them all that we had,” he said.

“That’s when they grabbed a cut­lass I had in the room and placed my hand on the ground to chop it off. I had to beg for mer­cy. I am not go­ing to lie, I start­ed to cry and pray be­cause I didn’t know how this would have end­ed.”

The men re­leased him af­ter spend­ing 20 min­utes ter­ror­is­ing the fam­i­ly.

“God saved my life, yes. They hog-tied Fawz and Ramkesh and fled the scene.”

The po­lice drove by the house short­ly af­ter the crim­i­nals es­caped but didn’t stop.

“Around 3 pm that evening is when the po­lice came to take a re­port,” he said.

Fawz was tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Cen­tre where he re­ceived three stitch­es to his head.

It was the sec­ond rob­bery Mo­hammed had ex­pe­ri­enced in a year.

Guardian Me­dia sent a What­sApp mes­sage to Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Cen­tral Po­lice Di­vi­sion Garvin Si­mon re­gard­ing the in­ci­dent and en­quir­ing if an ar­rest was made but re­ceived no re­sponse.