Gulf View res­i­dents whose homes were raid­ed by po­lice last week are call­ing on the Min­istry to pro­vide them with coun­selling.

The res­i­dents say they have not been able to sleep since the po­lice barged in­to their premis­es with guns and snif­fer dogs look­ing for a strange pack­age.

Ravi Di­nanath, a re­tired oil work­er and de­vout Hin­du said he has start­ed re­plac­ing the car­pets in his home.

“They came here with their stink­ing dog s@*t boots. I don’t walk with shoes in­to my prayer room and they came in here and des­e­crat­ed every­thing,” Di­nanath said.

He added that his wife Lelawa­tee who was hos­pi­talised af­ter the raid has been try­ing to re­cov­er from the trau­ma.

Di­nanath said they are law-abid­ing, God-fear­ing cit­i­zens and since the po­lice raids, they were now be­ing looked up­on as crim­i­nals. He said he planned to erect a sign in front of his home to let peo­ple know that he was not sell­ing drugs, guns and am­mu­ni­tion.

Di­nanath said he was look­ing for­ward to get­ting le­gal ad­vice.

He al­so said that po­lice had seized the DVR from a home cam­era sys­tem be­long­ing to one of the res­i­dents.

“I have ev­i­dence as to the num­ber of po­lice who came in­to my premis­es and if I get le­gal ad­vice I will con­sid­er my op­tions,” he said. Di­nanath added that his son went to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies yes­ter­day to write his ex­am­i­na­tions.

“This is a fi­nal ex­am. It is very im­por­tant and I know since they raid­ed the house, he was al­so af­fect­ed,” Di­nanath added. He said he was con­vinced that the raids were ei­ther racial­ly, re­li­gious­ly or po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

He not­ed that his el­dest son, who the po­lice wait­ed two and a half hours for, was nev­er charged or even de­tained.

On Sun­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith as­sured that the re­cent search­es were con­duct­ed for a spe­cif­ic pur­pose and not based on race, pol­i­tics or re­li­gion.

He de­nied state­ments by pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj that the TTPS was tar­get­ing mem­bers of the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty with in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tics as a part of a po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy.

Mean­while the own­er of Gopaul Elec­tron­ics, Suresh Ramd­han whose home was al­so raid­ed al­so said he want­ed an­swers. An­oth­er res­i­dent, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said the per­son whom the po­lice ar­rest­ed and then re­leased was a home­less man. He said the of­fi­cers broke down the door of a house owned by a re­tired Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School teacher Minty Ish­mael. The house re­mained board­ed up yes­ter­day.

Sev­en hous­es were raid­ed dur­ing the search last Fri­day. Noth­ing il­le­gal was found in the ex­er­cise car­ried out by the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team. Many of the home­own­ers claimed the po­lice did not show them any search war­rant to en­ter their homes.

What the law says

A search war­rant is nec­es­sary for en­try and search of any­one’s pri­vate premis­es. A search war­rant may be is­sued to en­ter a build­ing or any place to search for ev­i­dence in re­la­tion to any sum­ma­ry of­fence, as out­lined in sec­tion 41 of the Sum­ma­ry Courts Act Chap. 4:20. The on­ly le­gal way to search some­one’s premis­es, oth­er than in ef­fect­ing an ar­rest, is with a search war­rant or the ex­press per­mis­sion of the own­er.

Where the ques­tion of ef­fect­ing an ar­rest aris­es, an of­fi­cer may en­ter premis­es with­out a war­rant to pre­vent a mur­der, to ar­rest an of­fend­er who was fol­lowed in­to the premis­es, to pre­vent the com­mis­sion of a crime, and to fol­low an of­fend­er run­ning away from an of­fi­cer.

With re­gard to the is­su­ing of a search war­rant, a mag­is­trate or judge can is­sue a search war­rant once a po­lice of­fi­cer sat­is­fies the mag­is­trate or judge that he has rea­son­able cause to sus­pect that grounds ex­ist to jus­ti­fy the is­sue of the war­rant.

A search war­rant may be ad­dressed to any po­lice of­fi­cer. If a spe­cif­ic of­fi­cer is named, he alone can en­force the war­rant. Search war­rants may be ex­e­cut­ed at any time on any day of the week. A po­lice of­fi­cer can even break down the out­er door of the premis­es to ex­e­cute the war­rant if a de­mand for en­try has been re­fused.

Usu­al­ly, a search war­rant is ex­e­cut­ed in the pres­ence of the oc­cu­pi­er or, if he is ab­sent, in the pres­ence of any adult on the premis­es. The po­lice will read the war­rant to the per­son and af­ter the search, the of­fi­cer should en­dorse on the back of the war­rant what was found and seized, the name of the per­son present and the time and date.