Be­tween last Sun­day and yes­ter­day, 17 peo­ple, in­clud­ing Ch­agua­nas busi­ness­man Im­raz Ali, were added to the mur­der toll.

Com­ment­ing on the killings, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les chas­tised the Gov­ern­ment for the spate of killings, which in­clud­ed three dou­ble mur­ders.

On his Face­book page, Gon­za­les wrote: “17 mur­ders in 7 days in a State of Emer­gency. I tried pros­e­cut­ing this is­sue in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, query­ing the rea­sons as to why the gov­ern­ment, in the midst of this mad­ness, would au­tho­rised the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and a Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to leave the coun­try to at­tend a Con­fer­ence. I was blocked from rais­ing this as a se­ri­ous mat­ter by the Speak­er and, whilst all this is hap­pen­ing, a next jok­er in the pack of mis­fits, who can­not speak or read, de­cid­ed to blow air in a dirty white plas­tic bag in front of the Par­lia­ment, in what was the most scan­dalous and rep­re­hen­si­ble dis­play by a high of­fi­cial in this coun­try.”

Calls and mes­sages to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro went unan­swered. The mur­der toll for the year now stands at 293. For the same pe­ri­od last year, there were 492 mur­ders. For the month, there were 21 mur­ders, three more than last year.