Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A Hin­du spir­i­tu­al leader has been killed and his wife in­jured af­ter they were am­bushed in their ve­hi­cle on Thurs­day night while on their way to pro­vide spir­i­tu­al as­sis­tance in Cara­pichaima.

Po­lice said short­ly be­fore 10 pm, Prakash Bisses­sar and his wife, Re­nes­sa, were fol­low­ing a live lo­ca­tion via What­sApp in an at­tempt to find some­one to ren­der spir­i­tu­al as­sis­tance. While 40-year-old Bisses­sar was dri­ving along Opal Av­enue in Wa­ter­loo, sev­er­al gun­shots rang out, and their car swerved off the road in­to a bushy area. Po­lice found Bisses­sar’s life­less body slumped in the dri­ver’s seat with a wound to the back of his neck. His 33-year-old wife was bleed­ing from a wound near her ribs and re­mains in sta­ble con­di­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Ex­press­ing dis­be­lief over the shoot­ing, rel­a­tives said the cou­ple had de­vot­ed years to help­ing peo­ple through their spir­i­tu­al work and prayers and were clue­less as to why they were tar­get­ed. They said the cou­ple op­er­at­ed a tem­ple from their San Fran­cique home, and over the years, had giv­en spir­i­tu­al as­sis­tance to hun­dreds of peo­ple through prayer.

Bisses­sar’s moth­er-in-law, Zo­ri­na Ran­hit, 70, said “plen­ty” peo­ple would vis­it the tem­ple, but the cou­ple of­ten trav­elled to dif­fer­ent places to con­duct prayers and help peo­ple.

She re­called, “They leave here around 7. They tell us they was go­ing in a prayer.”

She said she had spo­ken to her daugh­ter about go­ing out late at night, but her daugh­ter al­ways as­sured her they would be fine.

“Even when they were go­ing, I just look at the car for the last, un­til I didn’t see it again. So it re­al­ly hurt me.”

Ran­hit re­called that ear­li­er this year, some­one set fire to Bisses­sar’s cars at their home, but she had no idea why that hap­pened or why they were at­tacked on Thurs­day night. “He is a good per­son. He is qui­et; he is nice,” she said.

Po­lice re­port­ed that the front and rear right-side win­dows of Bisses­sar’s Nis­san Note were smashed. In­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and Homi­cide Bu­reau Re­gion Three have not dis­closed a mo­tive for the shoot­ing.