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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Man drowns in swollen river

by

2815 days ago
20171025

KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A men­tal out­pa­tient be­came the first ca­su­al­ty of the re­cent na­tion­wide flood­ing when he drowned in the swollen Lengua Riv­er in Bar­rack­pore.

Rel­a­tives said as flood wa­ters rose on Mon­day af­ter­noon dur­ing a thun­der­storm, the riv­er swell was so much that wa­ter reached over a bridge along Cun­jal Road, where 53-year-old Kashib Ali would usu­al­ly cross dai­ly to get food and med­i­cine.

A re­port stat­ed that Ali, who lived alone on Cum­mo­to Road, Bar­rack­pore, was last seen walk­ing near the riv­er around 2 pm. Lat­er on when rel­a­tives went to his home he was nowhere to be found. A miss­ing per­son’s re­port was made to Bar­rack­pore po­lice. As the search went in­to yes­ter­day morn­ing, a Cun­jal Road res­i­dent re­port­ed see­ing a body on the riv­er bank.

Po­lice and rel­a­tives ar­rived and con­firmed Ali’s iden­ti­ty. An ini­tial ex­am­i­na­tion sug­gest­ed he drowned as there was no sign of vi­o­lence. But in­ves­ti­ga­tors said they were not sure if he slipped in­to the riv­er.

Ali’s broth­er, Ack­bar, told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day that he used to take care of Ali’s med­ica­tion and mail, but he lived a half mile away at Re­alise Road. Along the road was small bridge across over the Lengua Riv­er, which was be­ing threat­ened by flash floods

“He went miss­ing around 3 o’clock and we did not know where to look for him. Nor­mal­ly, he came for his med­ica­tion be­tween 2 and 3. When we missed him, I sent my son to look for him be­cause he was sup­posed to come for food and med­ica­tion," Ack­bar said.

“When we made some in­quiries peo­ple said they saw him go­ing to the riv­er, but he didn’t reach across by me. Then I re­alised some­thing was wrong. We start­ed to look but we could not do much be­cause the riv­er was re­al­ly high so we had to wait un­til we got a search par­ty and we found him about 500 feet from where we ex­pect­ed him to cross the bridge. I feel be­cause of the height of the wa­ter, he got swept away.”

He said he had been try­ing to get the riv­er cleaned for a long time, adding when the rains be­gan on Di­vali it was the worst flood­ing he had seen in years.


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