One day af­ter a Cu­mu­to cou­ple was killed, the MP for the area, Dr Rai Rag­bir, is call­ing for more po­lice pa­trol in the area. In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Rag­bir said the deaths of Naveen and Ku­mari Baksh left him deeply sad­dened and out­raged.

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 7.15 pm on Thurs­day, the Guat­a­pa­jaro Road, off Caratal Road, Cu­mu­to cou­ple Nasheed, 67, and his wife, 60, were found bound and gagged at their home.

And while noth­ing valu­able was re­port­ed miss­ing, po­lice sus­pect it was a home in­va­sion. Ku­mari was an at­tor­ney while her hus­band worked as her law clerk af­ter re­tir­ing as a check­er with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

Po­lice said Nasheed was found down­stairs in the fam­i­ly’s liv­ing room sur­round­ed by blood while his wife was found in a bed­room up­stairs. Po­lice are await­ing the re­sults of a post-mortem to de­ter­mine how the cou­ple was killed.

Res­i­dents said a rel­a­tive came look­ing for the lawyer and her hus­band on Thurs­day night af­ter try­ing un­suc­cess­ful­ly to con­tact them on Wednes­day. Rag­bir said he could not stand by as his con­stituents face the “ter­ri­fy­ing re­al­i­ty of crime and vi­o­lence.”

Rag­bir called for more re­sources to be pumped in­to the po­lice in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“I am call­ing on the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to ur­gent­ly al­lo­cate more re­sources to the po­lice in Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la. We need an in­creased po­lice pres­ence, en­hanced pa­trols, and more equip­ment and sup­port for our of­fi­cers to ad­dress the grow­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns in our com­mu­ni­ty. Our con­stituen­cy has been ne­glect­ed for far too long when it comes to ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.”

He added that his con­stituents de­serve to feel safe, and they have long suf­fered from in­suf­fi­cient law en­force­ment re­sources, with the dou­ble mur­der high­light­ing the need for ur­gent change.

The MP ap­pealed to the com­mu­ni­ty to build a greater re­la­tion­ship with law en­force­ment agen­cies and each oth­er.

“I urge any­one with in­for­ma­tion about this heinous crime to come for­ward and as­sist the po­lice with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. To­geth­er, we must take a stand against vi­o­lence and de­mand a safer fu­ture for our fam­i­lies and loved ones.”