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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Man murdered, aspring pundit shot after prayers

by

KEVON FELMINE
2312 days ago
20190327

Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors are hop­ing that Sher­von Narad Mo­hammed sur­vives the life-threat­en­ing wounds he suf­fered on Tues­day night so he can help piece to­geth­er his shoot­ing and the trag­ic mur­der of his friend Joseph Nar­ine.

Nar­ine, 60, who re­tired from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port a few weeks ago, died af­ter be­ing shot at his Duff Road, Hard­bar­gain home.

Yes­ter­day, friends and rel­a­tives gath­ered at Nar­ine’s home try­ing to make sense of his killing. The pic­tures of Hin­du deities and the deya he and Mo­hammed lit for prayer be­fore they were killed re­mained in­tact in­side a ran­sacked bed­room when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed. Nar­ine’s broth­er, who lives next door, was con­tem­plat­ing how to clean his broth­er’s blood that stained the bed­room.

Re­ports stat­ed that around 11.30 pm, Nar­ine and Mo­hammed were sit­ting in the liv­ing room when the gun­man stormed in and de­mand­ed cash and jew­ellery. He was giv­en jew­ellery and cell phones but con­tin­ued to search the wardrobe, draw­ers and cup­boards for valu­ables. When he was done, he shot Nar­ine in the head and chest. Mo­hammed, who ran off, was shot in his chest and back. He was able to run to Nar­ine’s rel­a­tives and was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he re­mained in a se­ri­ous but sta­ble con­di­tion yes­ter­day.

Princes Town po­lice and de­tec­tives from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Re­gion Three, in­clud­ing In­sp Fi­garo and WPC Valdez, vis­it­ed the scene. Search­es were made for the sus­pect but up to late yes­ter­day no one was held.

One of Nar­ine’s broth­ers said when he went to the house Nar­ine was dead.

“He (Mo­hammed) ran up the hill and told me my broth­er got shot. When I came down and touched him he was al­ready dead. He said the ban­dit came for mon­ey and jew­ellery while they were watch­ing TV. The had lit a deya and came down­stairs to watch TV.”

Nar­ine, who has one daugh­ter liv­ing in the US, lived alone. Mo­hammed, who was de­scribed as a pun­dit in the mak­ing, would vis­it Nar­ine dai­ly and they would say their prayers to­geth­er. How­ev­er, rel­a­tives and neigh­bours said Nar­ine was a qui­et and pri­vate man, so they knew lit­tle about his re­la­tion­ship with Mo­hammed.

But the death was shock­ing as they said Nar­ine was hum­ble and nev­er got in­to ar­gu­ments, smoked, drank al­co­hol or hung out at bars.

“From home to work and back home,” a neigh­bour said out­side Nar­ine’s house.

His cousin, Pun­dit Roop­nar­ine Ma­haraj, said the mur­der re­mind­ed him of the re­cent mass shoot­ing in New Zealand, as he heard they were shot dur­ing prayers. Roop­nar­ine said he heard the news on the ra­dio at noon and peo­ple thought it was he who was killed. He de­cid­ed to vis­it the house and it was on­ly then he re­alised it was his cousin who was mur­dered.

“Whether it was a re­li­gious act or not, this is the lev­el that this coun­try has come to, which makes me re­al­ly scared as a pun­dit or any priest where our se­cu­ri­ty and our fam­i­ly stands in that hour of the night. Look­ing at the sur­round­ings, Mr Nar­ine could not have had any­thing much at home,” Ma­haraj said.

“This is where we are as cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We are not safe, whether or not we’re spir­i­tu­al lead­ers at home. This is a call for the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the en­tire Gov­ern­ment to take hold and if these are not im­por­tant is­sues, then I don’t know what are im­por­tant is­sues again.”

While rob­bery seemed the ob­vi­ous mo­tive, neigh­bours and in­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve there was some­thing more and that Nar­ine’s mur­der was con­se­quen­tial. Neigh­bours said mur­ders and rob­beries were not com­mon in the com­mu­ni­ty and Nar­ine was not wealthy. Al­though he had just re­tired, rel­a­tives said pub­lic ser­vants take a long time to get their gra­tu­ity so there was noth­ing to en­tice ban­dits.


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