Kevon Felmine

Shock and hor­ror gripped a San Fer­nan­do com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day, af­ter the bod­ies of Khem­raj Ma­haraj and Ma­hase Moti­lal were dis­cov­ered em­brac­ing each oth­er with their eye­brows shaved off, their bod­ies tied to­geth­er with rope and elec­tri­cal tape on their faces.

What was mys­te­ri­ous about their deaths was that their bod­ies had no marks of vi­o­lence or signs of poi­son­ing.

But an au­top­sy by Dr Valery Alexan­drov at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day showed that both men died from some­thing they drank. Alexan­drov said it may not be homi­cide or sui­cide, as what­ev­er killed them was not lanate, paraquat or gramox­one. Blood, bile and urine sam­ples were sent for analy­sis to de­ter­mine what the men con­sumed. He said both men were chron­ic drinkers and died around the same time. The au­top­sy al­so found that they both con­sumed rice and veg­eta­bles around the same time.

Ma­haraj, 51, a handy­man and Moti­lal, 46, a PH taxi dri­ver, were de­scribed by res­i­dents as "rum bud­dies" who al­ways hung out to­geth­er. Con­fused, the res­i­dents stood in a per­sis­tent driz­zle out­side the Las Ve­gas Recre­ation Club, Tarou­ba, hop­ing to get an­swers as to what hap­pened.

A re­port stat­ed that Mara­bel­la po­lice were on pa­trol around 6 am when they saw the men ly­ing at the side of the bar. They called out to the men but got no re­sponse. It was on­ly when the of­fi­cers checked they re­alised the men were dead. Pieces of elec­tri­cal tape were placed un­der their noses, seem­ing to mim­ic a mous­tache and a piece of rope was at­tached to loops on both of their pants. The rope was be­lieved to have been cut from a po­lit­i­cal ban­ner that hung over the area where the men were last seen lim­ing.

Res­i­dents said both Ma­haraj and Moti­lal were lim­ing with a group of men oblique­ly op­po­site the club up to 9 pm Thurs­day and were in high spir­its.

Ma­haraj's broth­er, Adesh, said no one knew what hap­pened af­ter the lime. Al­though res­i­dents said the men were friends, Adesh said he did not know Moti­lal. His wife, Lena, said they on­ly got a call yes­ter­day morn­ing and lat­er found the men dead.

"We re­al­ly do not know what hap­pened. He is not the kind of per­son to get in­to fights with any­one, he just drinks and lime there. Every­one knows him; it was not like he was a bad per­son so it is shock­ing to us. Up to 9 o'clock last night, he was there," Lena said.

Moti­lal's broth­er, Vish­nu, said he saw the men lim­ing by the club around 8 pm and every­thing ap­peared to be nor­mal.

"We are baf­fled by this, but any­how you take it, it has to be a mur­der. I am so con­fused about this whole sit­u­a­tion be­cause he was in a good frame of mind," Vish­nu said.

Stand­ing out­side their Tarou­ba Road home, Vish­nu said he did not know how to break the news to their par­ents, Sook­daye Moti­lal, 73, and Moti­lal Ma­haraj, 74, who both are ail­ing.