“We are in hell on Earth.”

That was the re­sponse from In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion pres­i­dent, Pun­dit Lloyd Mukram Sir­joo, yes­ter­day when asked about the death of four-year-old Ama­rah Lal­lite, who was be­head­ed by a 39-year-old man now in po­lice cus­tody.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Pun­dit Sir­joo said the in­ci­dent sent shock waves through­out the coun­try.

“What would cause that to hap­pen? Around the world, we see geno­cide and wars tak­ing place, but across the world so much is hap­pen­ing, and when it reach­es home where a lit­tle child is af­fect­ed, it shows our so­ci­ety is re­al­ly lack­ing spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.”

As he ref­er­enced the tragedy, he con­tend­ed that giv­en the spate of crime and vi­o­lence, which he said con­tin­ues un­abat­ed, cit­i­zens need­ed to strength­en their fate.

“This cou­ple, they would have had their dif­fer­ences, and peo­ple can­not pull apart or leave, and that sit­u­a­tion where the lit­tle child has to face the con­se­quences of their mis­han­dling of their own prob­lems, we need more spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and in­di­vid­u­als need to up­lift their own spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and cre­ate a mo­men­tum of pos­i­tiv­i­ty.”

As he lament­ed the crime scourge, the IRO pres­i­dent main­tained that law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties need­ed to con­tin­ue their fight.

“One of the main rea­sons why these things are hap­pen­ing is be­cause crim­i­nals are not caught; if crim­i­nals are caught and crim­i­nals are pun­ished, and there is an ex­pec­ta­tion of be­ing caught and an ex­pec­ta­tion of be­ing pun­ished, then you would not have all of these things. The au­thor­i­ties will al­ways say we are do­ing this, things are in process, and we will be do­ing this and that. We want to know that the crim­i­nals are caught and put be­hind bars.”

He al­so said cit­i­zens can no longer har­bour of­fend­ers.

“Some­times the pub­lic has a lot of in­for­ma­tion, and if they share the in­for­ma­tion with the au­thor­i­ties, crimes would be down a bit and less­ened a bit,” he said.

“But why are we not shar­ing?” he asked.