Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A land dis­pute is sus­pect­ed to be the rea­son for the grue­some mur­der of sev­en­ty-four-year-old Fyz­abad pen­sion­er Hen­ry Mun­gal over the week­end.  

Mun­gal was stabbed and set on fire at his home at the cor­ner of John Jules Street Ex­ten­sion and Joseph Street some­time be­tween Sat­ur­day evening and Sun­day af­ter­noon.

Mun­gal’s friend found his charred body ly­ing face-up on the burnt-out wood­en bed on Sun­day around 3.30 pm. While there was a stove and din­ing room set in the room, on­ly the bed and body had been burnt.  The friend told po­lice he de­cid­ed to check on Mun­gal be­cause he last saw him around 5 pm on Sat­ur­day.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Mun­gal’s home yes­ter­day, his broth­er, Joseph Mun­gal, 72, was clean­ing blood from the floor and burn­ing the bed.  He said his broth­er lived alone and had no chil­dren. 

Joseph said he got to his broth­er’s home around 4 pm on Sun­day and saw his broth­er’s burnt body with a hole in its chest and a cut on the leg.

He said when their un­cle died, Mun­gal in­her­it­ed five acres of land. Mun­gal had 12 sib­lings, but not all co-owned the land, which had been in their fam­i­ly for about 100 years. He said  Joseph Street was named af­ter his grand­fa­ther.

He claimed some peo­ple had built on the land but re­fused to pay rent be­cause they claimed he (Mun­gal) had no deed for the land.

“Some peo­ple oc­cu­pied and built on the land un­know­ing to him and he took them to court. He al­ways said that there were peo­ple on the land who were giv­ing him trou­ble, wicked peo­ple,” Joseph said.

Joseph said he told his broth­er to sell the land and move, but he didn’t lis­ten.

He said, how­ev­er, that he didn’t ex­pect that his broth­er would have been mur­dered.

He be­lieves his broth­er was ly­ing on the bed when he was at­tacked. He said fight­ing over land was sense­less.

“Peo­ple could fight and kill for land how much they want and we will go and the land will re­main right here.  It is a waste of time, fight­ing for some­thing that is not yours could nev­er be right,” he said.

Con­cerned about the crime rate, he said there was no re­spect and too much law­less­ness.  While there were at least four un­solved mur­ders in his com­mu­ni­ty, Joseph re­mained hope­ful that the per­pe­tra­tors of his broth­er’s mur­der would be caught. Of­fi­cers of the Fyz­abad Po­lice, South West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force and  Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion Re­gion 3 vis­it­ed the scene and a knife was seized. 

The po­lice were still try­ing to nar­row down a mo­tive for his mur­der last evening.