From left distraught robbery victims Andre Bhagwat, 29, his brother Andy, 27 and friend Shonal Siew, 33, at a bar yesterday. PHOTOs: KARLA RAMOO

What was supposed to be a birthday celebration with friends turned into a nightmare as armed gunmen unleashed terror at a Curepe apartment early Sunday morning. Andy Bhagwat, who turned 27 on Saturday, yesterday recounted the harrowing ordeal of staring down the barrel of a gun, as robbers went on a rampage, stealing hundreds of dollars worth of valuables.

The incident occurred just hours after a shoot-out with police and thieves around 9 pm on Saturday. Bhagwat, who appeared shaken, was in company of his brother Andre, 29 and friend 33-year-old Shonal Siew, who witnessed the robbery. Bhagwat was lucky to escape once again, this is the fourth time he has been held up and robbed at his Evans Street home. The other incidents occurred last year and the year before that.

Birthday bash ruined
But Bhagwat’s story is just one of many, as businessmen and students living off UWI’s campus painted a picture of brazen daylight robberies, unreported sexual assaults and inefficiency by the St Joseph Police Station. Bhagwat’s birthday celebration came off with a bang on Saturday night but ended in chaos around 3 am Sunday. As he and eight of his friends were liming outside the apartment, three men suddenly leaped over the front gate and said it was a hold-up.
“Who was by the door had to run inside and hide. “One of the men had a bandanna over his face and kept pointing the gun at me,” Bhagwat recalled.

Unable to act, Bhagwat said he saw the assailants grab laptops, cellphones and wallets. A maintenance supervisor, Bhagwat said he was contemplating relocating. He said the other robberies were committed under similar circumstances. Each time the assailants jumped over the gate. “After the first robbery you get accustomed to it. But I’m thinking about moving now,” Bhagwat said. At the popular Gate Boys bar on Watts Street, proprietor Kamal Kalloo, said his establishment has also been robbed several times. Ignoring the financial cost, Kalloo said he recently installed video surveillance cameras on the premises. “That really helps,” he said adding, “but before it was a lot of robberies all the time.”

He related about a well-dressed woman wearing plenty gold, who came into the establishment, pretending to be a customer. “But she was really a bandit, She used to come and scope out the place and tell the men she working so that they could come and rob,” Kalloo said.
Next door, chief chef at J’s Bar-be-que Nazadeem Mohammed said the crime scourge in the Curepe/St Augustine area had him so fearful that he stopped travelling with his laptop. “That is the number one thing they thiefing. I living Bamboo Number One and I working near UWI. “When I finish work I travel home, get my laptop, travel to Curepe and then to Chaguanas to my classes. That cost me $27 a day,” Mohammed said.

Campus attacks
Third year geomatics student Dayne Ramtahal, who has an apartment on Watts Street, spoke of two incidents which left his friends traumatised. The first, he said, occurred when one of his friends was walking along a pathway in UWI when he was attacked by bandits around 7 pm. The friend, Ramtahal said, was robbed of his laptop. But as the friend put up a fight, one of the assailants held him from behind and tried to snap his neck. The second, Ramtahal said, involved his neighbour, who was also robbed of his laptop by a man carrying a shotgun. Another student said oftentimes rapes would go unreported.

“Robberies are a common occurrence in UWI. Students get so fed up they stop reporting it. “Rapes, too, are unreported because nothing comes out of the reports to the police,” the student said. But Hillan Morean, president of UWI Students’ Guild, said short term and long term measures were being implemented to make the campus safer. According to Morean, 60 video surveillance cameras were expected to be installed at strategic locations on the campus, as well as an increased presence of security officers.