Emo­tion­al scenes yes­ter­day at the fu­ner­al for mur­dered elec­tri­cian Shi­va Lochan. His moth­er was un­able to hold back the tears and at one point had to be held by rel­a­tives as she ap­peared weak with grief.

But amid the sor­row, a re­li­gious leader asked God to “bless” Lochan’s killers and to turn crim­i­nals away from their de­mon­ic ways.

Shi­va was re­port­ed miss­ing on De­cem­ber 7, 2023. His de­com­pos­ing body was found in a riv­er at Laun­dry Road, Kel­ly Vil­lage lat­er that month.

This week DNA re­sults con­firmed that the re­mains found in Kel­ly Vil­lage were those of the 28-year-old Debe elec­tri­cian.

Of­fi­ci­at­ing at the ser­vice yes­ter­day at the house of mourn­ing in Debe, pun­dit Ra­jesh Ram­per­sad Tewarie al­so prayed for strength for the par­ents, sib­lings and oth­er rel­a­tives as they faced this dif­fi­cult or­deal.

Un­able to phys­i­cal­ly touch his body as it was a closed cas­ket cer­e­mo­ny, Lochan’s moth­er, Nee­ta, ca­ressed a framed pho­to of her son and em­braced the box as she cried un­con­trol­lably.

De­spite her grief, the moth­er still as­sist­ed in car­ry­ing his cas­ket in a short pro­ces­sion along Welling­ton Road fol­low­ing the ser­vice.

Mourn­ers walked be­hind the dec­o­rat­ed hearse and mu­sic truck, and when they stopped they threw rice grains, a rit­u­al fol­lowed in the Hin­du re­li­gion.

Lochan’s step-sis­ter Alana Bis­nath de­liv­ered the eu­lo­gy. She re­called that Lochan was fond­ly called “Chill or Chill­man” and was al­ways am­bi­tious.

“Shi­va was al­ways a per­son who be­lieved in al­ways im­prov­ing him­self and mak­ing it one day in life and mak­ing his moth­er proud. He was al­ways on the go and would nev­er turn down a job as he had pri­or­i­ties in life. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, his goals were in­com­plete as his life was cut short at the hands of heart­less and un­re­morse­ful crim­i­nals/an­i­mals,” said Bis­nath.

She re­called the strong bond he shared with his moth­er. “He loved his moth­er un­con­di­tion­al­ly as she was his back­bone and his rock.”

Bis­nath said Lochan had a deep pas­sion for crick­et and loved go­ing to the gym and the tem­ple as he al­ways put God first in every­thing he did. De­scrib­ing him as a gem, she said, “Shi­va was a lev­el-head­ed, con­struc­tive young man who had a love for learn­ing new things and al­ways striv­ing to im­prove him­self. He was a gen­er­ous kind-heart­ed per­son with an im­pec­ca­ble char­ac­ter.”

Mean­while, pun­dit Tewarie asked for for­give­ness from rel­a­tives and mourn­ers be­fore he said an “un­usu­al” prayer.

“We ask God to for­give those who com­mit­ted this wrong for they do not know the val­ue of this life...We al­so pray to God to bless those who are on that neg­a­tive path, that de­mon­ic path, that crim­i­nal path that caus­es pain and suf­fer­ing for so many souls. We ask God to bless them so they could re­alise the im­por­tance of their life and how much good they could do in­stead of do­ing so much bad and caus­ing pain to oth­ers.”

The pun­dit al­so asked God’s bless­ings up­on the neg­a­tive el­e­ments in so­ci­ety be­cause he said God cre­at­ed a beau­ti­ful world and it “is on­ly fair that we are able to en­joy this with­out the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, so we ask that you cause the im­pos­si­ble to be­come pos­si­ble ... trans­form these in­di­vid­u­als in­to pos­i­tive be­ings so they could make a pos­i­tive change in the world.”

Lochan’s cre­ma­tion took place at the Shore of Peace in South Oropouche.— Sascha Wil­son