Derek Achong

For­mer health min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan is call­ing for ad­di­tion­al pro­tec­tion for wit­ness­es to crimes.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view hours af­ter his wife’s phar­ma­cy, Bha­gan’s Drugs at Tra­garete Road in Wood­brook was robbed by armed ban­dits on Sat­ur­day evening, Khan sug­gest­ed that such mea­sures would as­sist po­lice in ef­fec­tive­ly pros­e­cut­ing crimes.

Khan said: “ Even if my staff could recog­nise the peo­ple and point them out, they were in­di­cat­ing that they are afraid to do any­thing more than that be­cause of the lack of pro­tec­tion for wit­ness­es. Their biggest fear is that the peo­ple would come back out on bail and kill them.”

He went on: “I am think­ing we do re­al­ly need some form of dif­fer­ence in how peo­ple point out crim­i­nals so they (the crim­i­nals) do not know who point­ed them out.”

Khan said while his wife’s staff were un­harmed dur­ing the rob­bery they were still trau­ma­tised.

“They are shak­en but safe,” he said.

Khan not­ed that the in­ci­dent was the sec­ond at­tack on the busi­ness in less than a month as bur­glars broke in­to the es­tab­lish­ment, out­side of open­ing hours, in mid-De­cem­ber. In that in­ci­dent, the bur­glars tar­get­ed the safe and stole a lit­tle over $5,000.

“It ap­pears to be the same peo­ple be­cause the modus operan­di, the way they knew every­thing, was the same,” Khan said.

De­spite ex­press­ing de­spair over the crime sit­u­a­tion af­fect­ing T&T, Khan said he was hope­ful that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith would make a dif­fer­ence.

“I agree with Gary Grif­fith’s method of ap­proach. Let Gary Grif­fith do his job and things may change,” he said.