An­na-Lisa Paul

Seniro Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan, SC, said yes­ter­day that the rob­bery at gun­point of Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh should send a clear mes­sage to him (Deyals­ingh) that “crime has come home to him if not the en­tire Cab­i­net, as it has to the en­tire coun­try.”

“It ap­pears that Deyals­ingh was of the view that he was ex­empt­ed from such an atroc­i­ty on the ground, that he was a min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment or that he is a well-known per­son­al­i­ty in St Joseph—if not the en­tire coun­try,” Khan said in a state­ment.

Not­ing that the gold be­ra Deyals­ingh was wear­ing in broad day­light was worth at least $35,000, he asked: “Why would he be open­ly show­ing-off such a bracelet?

“He fool­ish­ly be­lieves that as a min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment the crim­i­nals would not dare touch him with their crimes. He be­lieves, as many oth­er mem­bers of Cab­i­net, that they are un­touch­able.

“Both Fitzger­ald Hinds and Kei­th Scot­land wear sim­i­lar bracelets. So I say to them, watch out my friends, the chick­ens have come home to roost.”

Khan won­dered if, as a re­sult of the in­ci­dent, “Deyals­ingh would now in­sist that the chair­man of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, and the two min­is­ters in charge of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, name­ly Fitzger­ald Hinds and Kei­th Scot­land, de­vise work­able pol­i­cy and plans to stem the un­prece­dent­ed vi­o­lent crimes in the coun­try.”

Al­so weigh­ing in on the in­ci­dent was the First Wave Move­ment. The group called for a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the “sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances” in which Deyals­ingh was robbed.

Founder Umar Ab­dul­lah said the pub­lic has been left with “far more ques­tions than an­swers.”

“What is be­ing pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic as a sim­ple rob­bery ap­pears to be a care­ful­ly or­ches­trat­ed event to ad­vance a dan­ger­ous agen­da: the de­c­la­ra­tion of crime as a pub­lic health emer­gency,” he said in a state­ment, point­ing to what he claimed were glar­ing in­con­sis­ten­cies and the sus­pi­cious set­ting in which the rob­bery oc­curred.

Deyals­ingh, 66, was seat­ed out­side Nyabinghi Bar, at the cor­ner of Aber­crom­by and King Streets, St Joseph, when he was robbed.

Ab­dul­lah asked: “Why was the Min­is­ter so com­fort­able in such a set­ting which it­self seems to flaunt the law?”

Point­ing to the ab­sence of the min­is­ter’s se­cu­ri­ty de­tail, he added: “Is it not strange that a min­is­ter, who sup­pos­ed­ly fears for his life enough to mon­i­tor cit­i­zens, would be with­out se­cu­ri­ty in a high-risk area?”

Not­ing that the rob­bers took on­ly the gold bracelet and left Deyals­ingh’s phone, wal­let, wed­ding ring, and watch un­touched, Ab­dul­lah said: “This se­lec­tive rob­bery de­fies log­ic and rais­es sus­pi­cion that it was staged to cre­ate a spe­cif­ic nar­ra­tive.”

Po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj said he was thank­ful that Deyals­ingh had walked away un­harmed and the po­lice had been able to ap­pre­hend two sus­pects with­in hours.

“I al­so wish that this type of re­sponse was the norm for the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, and not re­served for when crimes are per­pe­trat­ed against min­is­ters and their fam­i­lies alone,” he said.

“At the end of the day, when crime is per­pe­trat­ed against or­di­nary civil­ians, they do not have the ben­e­fit of hav­ing some­one on speed di­al who might be able to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion.”

Ma­haraj said the in­ci­dent ex­posed the rul­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion’s at­ti­tude to­wards crime as it af­fect­ed cit­i­zens and the dif­fer­ence in ap­proach by the po­lice when Gov­ern­ment was di­rect­ly af­fect­ed.

“Un­til the Gov­ern­ment starts tak­ing af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion in deal­ing with these crim­i­nals, ab­solute­ly no one in this coun­try is safe,” he said.