Sascha Wil­son

Al­most three weeks af­ter Ram­rag “Sky” Ram­nanan was mur­dered, a can­dle­light vig­il/jus­tice cam­paign has been launched call­ing for his killer/s to be ar­rest­ed.

Head­ed by Hard Grounds Get Soft leader Ren Gopeesingh, the vig­il start­ed on Thurs­day and will be held night­ly for a week at Ram­nanan’s Boodoo Trace, Debe home.

Gopeesingh said al­most 100 peo­ple, in­clud­ing friends, fam­i­ly and vil­lagers, at­tend­ed the first night and he ex­pects that the gath­er­ing will in­crease be­cause Ram­nanan was well-loved in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Ram­nanan, 42, a land­scap­er and wreck­er own­er, lived alone. He was found ly­ing in blood out­side his Pe­nal home around 9 pm on Ju­ly 31. Days lat­er, an au­top­sy found that he died from shock and haem­or­rhage due to a gun­shot wound to the chest.

His $100,000 gold chain, phone and wal­let were miss­ing. How­ev­er, he was still wear­ing his gold rings and gold bracelet when his body was found by a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer.

While some be­lieve rob­bery was the mo­tive, Gopeesingh said his in­for­ma­tion was that a life in­sur­ance was tak­en out on Ram­nanan days be­fore his death. He be­lieves that Ram­nanan was lured out of his home by some­one who knew him be­cause when he was found, he was wear­ing a box­ers, socks and slip­pers.

“Who will come out of their house to talk to some­body they don’t know with just a box­ers on?”

De­scrib­ing him as a good and qui­et per­son, he said Ram­nanan used to host one of the biggest Christ­mas toy dri­ves in the com­mu­ni­ty and he would dress up like San­ta Claus at events.

“We want the po­lice to get se­ri­ous and ques­tion peo­ple and find who did this. He was like a broth­er to all of us and we want jus­tice,” he said. Ram­nanan’s broth­er-in-law, who did not want to be named, said, “He work hard. If you go down to Debe and talk to peo­ple, no­body have noth­ing bad to tell you about him. The man was a good one.”

He said the day be­fore Ram­nanan was mur­dered, he passed by their home in Cen­tral af­ter a doc­tor’s vis­it.

Ram­nanan re­cent­ly built his house and had on­ly moved in about three months ago, but the house was not yet out­fit­ted with an elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply. Lament­ing that there is “too much vi­o­lence in the coun­try,” he is hop­ing that they will get jus­tice.

In keep­ing with the Hin­du prac­tices, he said the shav­ing of the head will be done to­day. Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion 3 are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.—Sascha Wil­son