Geisha Kow­lessar

A das­tard­ly act. This was how an in­censed Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Fazal Karim yes­ter­day de­scribed the killing of his cousin, Nee­shad Ali.

Karim ar­rived at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James just be­fore 10 am and con­soled griev­ing rel­a­tives who open­ly wept and de­mand­ed swift jus­tice for Ali's slay­ing. The min­is­ter said he re­turned on Sun­day af­ter­noon from New York. He had been part of the del­e­ga­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in New York and was about to at­tend a func­tion held by his moth­er to "break fast­ing" when he was told of the hor­rif­ic news.

"We nev­er knew these kind of crimes in a vil­lage like Cara­pichaima and ob­vi­ous­ly they are com­mit­ted by peo­ple who come in­to your house to work, see what you have and just de­cide they want what you have. "They are not pre­pared to work. The so­ci­ety has to change and jus­tice must be swift. I am not say­ing this be­cause Nee­shad is my cousin I am say­ing this for all the oth­er un­for­tu­nate killings," Karim said. Ali, 37, who got mar­ried on­ly a week ago, was hacked to death at the back porch down­stairs his two storey home at Wohler's Boule­vard, Friend­ship Dri­ve, off McLeoud Trace, in Cara­pichaima.

Af­ter the killing the per­pe­tra­tors then kid­napped Ali's 27-year-old wife and one-year-old daugh­ter Alia. A ran­som of $100,000 was de­mand­ed for their safe re­turn. They, how­ev­er, were res­cued by the po­lice mere hours af­ter. No mon­ey was paid. Up to late yes­ter­day, four sus­pects, two from Cara­pichaima and two from Mara­bel­la, were in po­lice cus­tody. A vis­i­bly-dis­traught Karim said the per­pe­tra­tors were "well-known" to his cousin, adding that his life was snuffed out sim­ply be­cause of greed. "This is a very das­tard­ly act of vi­o­lence com­mit­ted by peo­ple who were ob­vi­ous­ly known to him (Ali) and maybe hav­ing iden­ti­fied them that's why they de­cid­ed to get rid of Nee­shad. "It is so very un­for­tu­nate when a life is worth $100,000 in this coun­try," Karim said.

Lament­ing on the crime scourge sweep­ing the coun­try, Karim said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment faced an up­hill task of tack­ling crim­i­nals. "This is what we have in­her­it­ed as a Gov­ern­ment and we have to deal with it ef­fec­tive­ly and in­stant­ly. "The crim­i­nals are run­ning hay­wire in this coun­try and that has to stop," Karim said. De­scrib­ing his cousin, as hav­ing very sim­i­lar ways to his fa­ther, Shan, Karin said it was very un­for­tu­nate that Ali's killing oc­curred dur­ing the month of Ra­madan. "Could you imag­ine if an act like this was com­mit­ted in Sau­di Ara­bia what would have been the con­se­quences of those peo­ple who the po­lice held?

"I think it is time this coun­try takes a very swift look at how jus­tice must be dealt with for these peo­ple who com­mit­ted the act," Karim said. Re­flect­ing on his teach­ing days sev­er­al years ago be­fore he be­came min­is­ter, Karim said he taught Ali at the Cara­pichaima Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive School. "I had the plea­sure of teach­ing him busi­ness stud­ies. I was his form teacher. "I taught him at a time when peo­ple thought the ju­nior and sec­ondary schools were not pro­duc­ing as well as they should and Nee­shad went on to be­come a qual­i­fied ac­coun­tant," Karim said.