Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A po­lice raid at a Cunu­pia Church ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing led to a shoot-out and ul­ti­mate­ly the deaths of a 52-year-old man and his son, po­lice said.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers of the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit vis­it­ed the Com­mu­ni­ty Bible Church on Per­sad Av­enue, off Mon Plaisir Road, around 5.10 am to ar­rest two men as part of on­go­ing ex­tor­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

On en­ter­ing the com­pound, how­ev­er, of­fi­cers were shot at by peo­ple in­side the fa­cil­i­ty.

The of­fi­cers took cov­er and re­turned fire, killing Alvin Bharath and his 28-year-old son Avin­dra Bharath.

Both men were tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where they were de­clared dead.

Po­lice said they found a pis­tol and a re­volver on both fa­ther and son.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said an­oth­er pis­tol was found on the sec­ond storey of the Church build­ing.

One of­fi­cer said the el­der Bharath was re­cent­ly re­leased from prison for fraud charges, not­ing that he was im­pli­cat­ed in at least 16 re­ports of ex­tor­tion, main­ly with­in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

Two rel­a­tives who were in the house at the time - a 51-year-old woman and a 15-year-old boy - were ar­rest­ed and re­mained in po­lice cus­tody at dif­fer­ent po­lice sta­tions up to late yes­ter­day.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene, blood­stains and bro­ken glass were vis­i­ble on the en­trance to the fa­cil­i­ty.

A glass pan­el on the front door was al­so bro­ken, as streaks of blood were vis­i­ble through the dam­aged door.

One res­i­dent, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, re­called hear­ing the in­ci­dent as the po­lice first got to the Church.

“I think they (the po­lice) knew what to ex­pect be­cause as soon as they broke the glass and opened the door, there was shots fired and they (the po­lice) re­turned fire with a shot­gun.

“Shots were fired for about three min­utes, it stopped for about a minute or two, and then it be­gan again.

“When I heard the gun­shots, I didn’t be­lieve it got to that point, but at this point any­thing is pos­si­ble.”

The res­i­dent said the fam­i­ly has been liv­ing at the Church for the past four years and was orig­i­nal­ly from Kel­ly Vil­lage. He said he nev­er sus­pect­ed that the Bharaths were in­volved in any­thing il­le­gal.

“Peo­ple could paint a good pic­ture and say that they’re a good neigh­bour, but once you’re mind­ing your busi­ness and not mind­ful of what they’re do­ing, you won’t check and mon­i­tor any­one.”

How­ev­er, an­oth­er res­i­dent said he re­called see­ing po­lice vis­it the Church to speak with one of the fam­i­ly mem­bers, which aroused his sus­pi­cion and changed the way he saw the fam­i­ly.

“I didn’t think much of them at first, it was just ‘Hel­lo’ and ‘Good morn­ing,’ but af­ter that, I start­ed to watch them dif­fer­ent­ly, be­cause it’s some­thing none of us ex­pect­ed.”

One po­lice source said of­fi­cers vis­it­ing the home were fol­low­ing up on “weeks of in­tel­li­gence,” as a re­sult of on­go­ing en­quiries in­to ex­tor­tion, al­so known as de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace.

When con­tact­ed, the Church’s pas­tor, Bick­ram Singh, said while he could con­firm that a fam­i­ly was rent­ing a room on the com­pound, he was un­aware of what led to the shoot­ing.

Singh not­ed he was con­cerned that such a vi­o­lent in­ci­dent had hap­pened on the church com­pound.

“Of course, it must be un­set­tling, and we as a Church are trau­ma­tised by these events, and be­cause of un­cer­tain­ty it is some­thing very un­set­tling for us, but we trust in God for in­for­ma­tion and bet­ter out­comes for fam­i­lies in our na­tion.

PCA con­cerned

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via email, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) said it was aware of the lat­est po­lice killing, not­ing that all re­ports of po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings were for­mal­ly ini­ti­at­ed by the au­thor­i­ty for as­sess­ment.

The au­thor­i­ty ac­knowl­edged that while po­lice of­fi­cers had a right to de­fend them­selves from at­tacks, there was a need for of­fi­cers to use body-worn cam­eras (BWCs) on du­ty.

“The au­thor­i­ty re­mains con­cerned about the in­crease in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in­ci­dents with­out any body-worn cam­era footage be­ing made avail­able and con­tin­ues to re­quest that the TTPS fol­low their own De­part­men­tal Or­ders re­quir­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to wear body-worn cam­eras.

“The PCA con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor and as­sess these mat­ters close­ly.”

The deaths of the Bharaths bring the num­ber of peo­ple killed in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings to five over the past two weeks.