Sascha Wil­son

Lament­ing that there is evil plagu­ing T&T, a pas­tor urged mourn­ers at the fu­ner­als of the Pe­nal triple homi­cide vic­tims to pray for their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties.

Pas­tor Ravi Ram­phal of­fi­ci­at­ed at the ser­vice for fa­ther of three Anand Ku­mar, 42, and his 18-year-old son Kishore, 18, in a chapel at Boyzie Boodoo Fu­ner­al Home in Pe­nal yes­ter­day. Ear­li­er, rel­a­tives and mourn­ers were at the same chapel at­tend­ing a sep­a­rate cer­e­mo­ny for Rol­ly Ho­sein, 26, the com­mon-law hus­band of Ku­mar’s sis­ter Kim­ber­ly Dean.

The three men were dragged out of their home at Char­lo Vil­lage on April 25 and ex­e­cut­ed in the yard.

“I can’t see my son face, wailed Ku­mar’s moth­er Lin­da Ba­j­nath as she looked at his pho­to­graph on top of his cas­ket.

In his ser­mon, Ram­phal ex­pressed con­cern that young peo­ple no longer have the “fear of God in their hearts.”

“We have the au­thor­i­ty and the pow­er that can re­lin­quish evil. If men and women will just seek God and trust in this process it will arise in more good­ness and more favour in prayer then we will see more evil de­cline,” he said.

“I en­cour­age you, broth­ers and sis­ters, friends, fam­i­ly well-wish­ers, in this time as you pray for this fam­i­ly, pray for yours, pray for your com­mu­ni­ties, pray for our once beau­ti­ful coun­try that every­body want­ed to come to, now every­body wants to de­part. No, no­body wants to come again, not even as beau­ti­ful as they would say Car­ni­val is be­cause once we were say­ing that it was a cul­ture of beau­ty but it has be­come a cul­ture of evil, dark­ness has plagued our land. Don’t give up be­cause of what is lurk­ing, we fight in prayer.”

At Ho­sein’s fu­ner­al ser­vice, Imam Ja­mal Sookoor told the griev­ing rel­a­tives to ac­cept God’s will.

“If you try to take mat­ters in­to your own hands, you will end up do­ing some­thing that is wrong and you will not be re­ward­ed, but if you have pa­tience, you will be re­ward­ed tremen­dous­ly,” he said.

Ho­sein’s fa­ther Taz­mool and, his three broth­ers were among the mourn­ers.

Aisha Cor­bie, head of the TTPS So­cial Sup­port Ser­vices which in­cludes the Vic­tim Wit­ness and Sup­port Unit (VW­SU), at­tend­ed both fu­ner­als ac­com­pa­nied by a team of of­fi­cers and spoke with rel­a­tives.

One mur­der is enough, but three mur­ders is a very, very sig­nif­i­cant lev­el of trau­ma for any com­mu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence,” she said.

Cor­bie said Vi­jay Je­bods­ingh, of VW­SU South West­ern Di­vi­sion, vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly on Tues­day as they pre­pared for the fu­ner­als. She said the fam­i­ly would be giv­en on­go­ing sup­port.

“We know a num­ber of chil­dren would be af­fect­ed by this very trag­ic event and com­ing for a fu­ner­al for one per­son, but com­ing to a fu­ner­al for three per­sons is very, very sig­nif­i­cant,” she said.

All three were buried at the Batchyia Ceme­tery.

Up to late yes­ter­day po­lice had no mo­tive for the mur­ders and no sus­pects had been ar­rest­ed.