Point Fortin pastor Roodal Balkaran says violence in T&T has elevated to a new level where children are becoming victims of abuse with increasing frequency.He said so during the funeral of two month-old baby Andre Feroze Mowlah who died on Sunday at his Cap-de-Ville home, allegedly at the hands of a relative.The relative allegedly threw the baby to the ground in a fit of rage, police claimed. A post mortem report listed the baby's cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head.
The suspect, a 34-year-old heavy equipment operator, was expected to be charged with murder last evening. However, up to press time no charges had been laid.Yesterday Balkaran, speaking to mourners at Elite Funeral Home Chapel, Main Road, New Lands, Point Fortin, said baby Andre's life was "snuffed out by the cruel hands of death."He said when one looked at history it started with violence against men, "man was killing man."
However, he said that changed with time to violence against women and now there was violence against children."Everyday you pick up the papers there is violence against some child... an eight-year-old, a six-year-old... a 12 year-old. Everyday you pick up the papers it is murder and mayhem. Murder and mayhem is the order of the day," he added.Balkaran told baby Andre's mother, Diane Ramsaroop, not to worry about her son."He has not gone, as they say to a better place, he has gone to the best place," he said.
With tears streaming down her cheeks the Point Fortin mother, clenching her daughter Tarra's hand, walked towards the baby's coffin.She leaned over the open coffin and caressed and kissed the tiny face of baby Andre. She looked at the wreath with white flowers and a white teddy bear on top the coffin, a reminder of the tiny body that lay inside.Ramsaroop whispered to her son as she adjusted his white headdress in the coffin.
Balkaran said Ramsaroop was denied the chance to see her child grow up.He said: "Mom will never know what it is like to take him to his first day of kindergarten and then take him to Cap-de-Ville Primary School."She will never see him graduate from college and maybe see him become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever he would have become. God alone knows. The cruel hands of death snuffed him out." .Balkaran told Ramsaroop she did not have to worry about her son anymore because he was in a place where he would feel no pain.