SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Hog-tied, mer­ci­less­ly beat­en and robbed by two gun­men on his sprawl­ing Carlsen Field farm, stroke vic­tim and live­stock farmer Glen Rag­birs­ingh strug­gled to con­tain his tears as he re­count­ed his near-death en­counter with his at­tack­ers.

Thank­ing God for spar­ing his life, Rag­birs­ingh, 50, was at­tacked and beat­en twice by armed rob­bers in less than one month.

Rag­birs­ingh is one of sev­er­al live­stock farm­ers in the coun­try who has been at the mer­cy of crim­i­nals.

Farm­ers be­lieve the steal­ing of crops, ma­chin­ery, equip­ment, tools, chem­i­cals, fer­tilis­ers, plants, and an­i­mals is linked to an or­gan­ised gang of thieves.

Live­stock rustling, ac­cord­ing to pres­i­dent of the Sheep and Goat Farm­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan is a lu­cra­tive busi­ness for an­i­mal smug­glers who have been rak­ing in big bucks from the sale of a va­ri­ety of meats.

The sit­u­a­tion has be­come grave for farm­ers who have be­come “sit­ting ducks.”

 Mean­while, Khan said, the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad (PLS), which was formed to give farm­ers pro­tec­tion and pro­vide a sense of se­cu­ri­ty, lacked suf­fi­cient of­fi­cers and ve­hi­cles to fight crime.

For this year, more than three dozen farm­ers in Carlsen Field, En­deav­our, Cou­va, Ch­agua­nas, and Cal­cut­ta have suf­fered heavy loss­es at the hands of rob­bers.

While at­tend­ing to his an­i­mals on April 20, Rag­birs­ingh was held up by two armed men who pre­tend­ed to be po­lice of­fi­cers.

The thieves es­caped with $50, a cell phone, and jew­ellery.

On May 6, Rag­birs­ingh was robbed again by two men who said they were look­ing for jobs. The men whipped out guns and or­dered Rag­birs­ingh in­side where they tied his hands and feet with rope and cov­ered his mouth with duct tape.

Carlsen Field farmer Glen Ragbirsingh was badly beaten by bandits.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Min­utes be­fore the rob­bery, Rag­birs­ingh had fetched $2,400 for two sheep.

“They placed tape over my nose like they want­ed to kill me be­cause I couldn’t breathe. The ban­dits asked me where the sheep mon­ey is. I didn’t tell them and that’s when the licks start­ed.”

Rag­birs­ingh said he was punched, kicked, slapped and re­peat­ed­ly hit on his head with a gun butt in the pres­ence of his 80-year-old moth­er, Sam­daye Rag­birs­ingh, who plead­ed with the at­tack­ers not to use ex­ces­sive force on her son who re­cent­ly suf­fered a stroke on his left side.

The ban­dits re­fused to lis­ten, push­ing the pe­tite pen­sion­er to the ground, as they be­gan to ran­sack their home.

“With each lash I get, I kept say­ing my prayers be­cause I hon­est­ly thought my end was near. But the rob­bers told me that God can’t help no mat­ter how much prayers I re­cite.”

He said the 30-minute or­deal was video­taped on one of the rob­ber’s phones.

When they did not get the mon­ey, the men drove off with Rag­birs­ingh’s $50,000 van, a cir­cu­lar saw, a grass cut­ter, an ex­ten­sion cord, a weld­ing ma­chine, and a chain­saw val­ued at $15,000.

Fear­ing for his life and liveli­hood, Rag­birs­ingh has beefed up the se­cu­ri­ty of his home.

He has to fork out mon­ey to pay se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers to make spot checks on his farm.

“These thieves have crip­pled me. They are putting me in re­al ex­pense. You own thing they want to kill you for. They don’t want to work. My fam­i­ly telling me to sell out my farm. But any­where you go, you will face the same prob­lem with these ban­dits. They are all over. From the way these guys op­er­at­ed I have no doubt they are part of a gang … it’s a net­work.”

Rag­birs­ingh de­scribed the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad as a “waste of time,” stat­ing when he re­port­ed the first rob­bery, they told him they could not help.

“I just get fed up.”

Farmer Rajendranath Lall at his garden on the Endeavour Road, Chaguanas.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

‘It’s or­gan­ised crime’

In Feb­ru­ary, rustlers al­so cart­ed away eight an­i­mals from Carlsen Field farmer and busi­ness­man Don­ny Rogers’ farm val­ued at $60,000.

Rogers, a for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer, said af­ter prob­ing he found out that the theft had been com­mit­ted by two men who of­ten prowl the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

“It’s an or­gan­ised ring … it’s or­gan­ised crime,” Rogers said.

In the dead of the night, the men would prey on cat­tle, goats, sheep, ducks, chick­ens and pigs—all valu­able com­modi­ties.

Rogers said the crim­i­nals would tie and trans­port the small­er an­i­mals to Los Iros, Ste Madeleine, Preysal and Siparia in pan­el vans to sell.

“They would walk the larg­er an­i­mals be­hind a near­by farm, slaugh­ter them and trans­port the meat for sale. These thieves are hooked up with butch­ers to sell the meat. They have every­thing in place.”

Six of Rogers’ bulls and milk­ing cows were slaugh­tered for their meat and the car­cass­es were found not too far from his farm.

“The thieves would have got­ten be­tween 5,000 to 6,000 pounds of beef to sell. In one night, these ban­dits could have cashed in $50,000 to $60,000 if they sold each pound of meat at $10 to a butch­er who in turn would re­tail it in the mar­ket be­tween $20 to $25 per pound.”

Goat meat sells at $45 a pound, while a pedi­gree goat tip­ping the scale at 20 pounds can fetch over $4,000.

A three-month-old pedi­gree lamb is priced at $8,000.

Pedi­gree an­i­mals are pure­bred and used for breed­ing pur­pos­es.

Rogers said the butch­ers know the men sell­ing them the meat are ban­dits, but they get it at low prices, so they turn a blind eye.

“It’s a lu­cra­tive busi­ness and these thieves are cap­i­tal­is­ing on the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make fast mon­ey. These crim­i­nals need to be be­hind bars be­cause they are caus­ing too much fi­nan­cial and emo­tion­al stress to farm­ers. In the last six months, I would say at least 60 cows were stolen. We not talk­ing about goat and sheep yet.”

Rogers said he got back one of the an­i­mals from a Tarou­ba butch­er who gave the po­lice a state­ment with the names of the rustlers. The butch­er in­sist­ed that he was keep­ing the an­i­mal for some­one.

“That was two months ago and no charges have been laid against any­one,” Rogers said.

Live­stock farmer Ra­jen­dranath Lal­la lost six milk­ing cows and two calves priced at $70,000. Lal­la’s En­deav­our farm was in­vad­ed by crim­i­nals three times in four weeks.

“I strong­ly sus­pect that the crim­i­nals sell­ing these an­i­mals to a butch­er/s. Since they start­ed steal­ing our an­i­mals we get dis­cour­aged. Hon­est­ly, we sold some of our an­i­mals be­cause we los­ing plen­ty of mon­ey with this steal­ing. We ain’t get the full price. Any price peo­ple of­fer we that is how we sell­ing the an­i­mals,” he said.

Lal­la said he made a re­port to the PLS, but the per­pe­tra­tors were not caught.

“No ar­rest so far.”

The ban­dits, Lal­la said, have al­so been raid­ing his sweet pota­to, corn, hot pep­pers and ed­does farm.

“Every night they tot­ing away five and six bags. They mak­ing a clean sweep,” a frus­trat­ed Lal­la added.

Former Goat and Sheep Farmers Association president Shiraz Khan holds a sheep at his Carlsen Field, Chaguanas, farm to allow a baby to nurse.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

‘Crim­i­nals have more rights than law-abid­ing cit­i­zens’

Khan said the crim­i­nals are be­com­ing em­bold­ened and more adept at ex­ploit­ing crim­i­nal op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“They have been tar­get­ing for a while. And we can’t get li­cenced firearms be­cause we don’t have the se­cu­ri­ty of land tenure. So, we have to take what comes our way. Crim­i­nals have more rights than law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment needs to get se­ri­ous about agri­cul­ture, stat­ing that the PLS is in a to­tal mess.

“You don’t ever see them pa­trolling around our farms. Al­so, they nev­er have gas in their ve­hi­cles to re­spond to a re­port. The squad is ba­si­cal­ly in­op­er­a­ble be­cause they on­ly have a few of­fi­cers to pa­trol the en­tire coun­try that is un­der siege by crim­i­nals.”

One of the coun­try’s biggest live­stock farm­ers in T&T, Khan said no­body gives a damn about agri­cul­ture.

Some farm­ers go­ing out of busi­ness

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Cat­tle Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Chris Med­ford, ad­mit­ted that the live­stock in­dus­try is in a state of de­cline due to fre­quent at­tacks.

“Prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is a se­ri­ous prob­lem and the farm­ers are hit hard. Some farm­ers have had to go out of busi­ness.”

From a vi­brant mem­ber­ship of 1,500 farm­ers, Med­ford said the in­dus­try has 55 farm­ers op­er­at­ing to­day.

“We are fac­ing a dis­as­ter.”

Minister of Agriculture Kazim Hosein

NICOLE DRAYTON

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture fails to re­spond

A list of ques­tions was al­so What­sApped to Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein re­gard­ing the PLS and the rustling in Cen­tral which he read but failed to re­spond to.