Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son

@guardian.co.tt

“I don’t know why they did that to my son,” sobbed Leela Mo­hammed, moth­er of 33-year-old pump­kin farmer Ka­mal Mo­hammed, who was gunned down while work­ing in a gar­den on Tues­day.

The killing has rocked the Manohar Trace com­mu­ni­ty in Bar­rack­pore, leav­ing rel­a­tives reel­ing with grief and search­ing for an­swers.

Mo­hammed, a fa­ther of two, was tend­ing crops around mid­day at his broth­er’s gar­den off Manohar Trace, along with his broth­er and a work­er, when a masked gun­man rode in on a bi­cy­cle, shot him in the head and fled.

His par­ents, Leela and Sac­k­eer Mo­hammed, are now strug­gling to come to terms with the sud­den and vi­o­lent loss of their son, whom they de­scribed as a hard­work­ing and de­vot­ed fam­i­ly man.

“I don’t know what to say about what hap­pened, but he did not de­serve that. If they want­ed the pro­duce or the land, they didn’t have to do him that. They could have tak­en it and left my child alone,” lament­ed 63-year-old Leela Mo­hammed.

She re­called that she and her hus­band, Sac­k­eer Mo­hammed, 73, were on their way to pay a bill when their daugh­ter-in-law called with the news.

“When I went and saw him, I could not bear it. I start­ed bawl­ing. I can’t un­der­stand why they shot him. He was not in any­body’s way. He was in his gar­den with my oth­er son and the work­er. They tried to shoot the oth­er boy, but he ran,” she said.

She added that her son had no en­e­mies and no known dis­putes. De­scrib­ing him as fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed, she said he nei­ther smoked nor con­sumed al­co­hol and was en­thu­si­as­tic about fit­ness.

She ex­plained that her oth­er son ac­quired the land last year and they be­gan plant­i­ng pump­kin this year. Mo­hammed’s wife has not yet told their chil­dren, ages four and six, about his death.

“I miss­ing him. I wish I could get jus­tice. I don’t see, but God sees. He sees and He knows best, be­cause he nev­er trou­bled any­body,” she said.

Through tears, his fa­ther added, “It re­al­ly hurts us.”

Mukesh Ma­hase, a work­er who was with the broth­ers, said they had been in the gar­den for less than an hour when he heard three gun­shots. Mo­hammed’s broth­er then ran to­ward him, say­ing Ka­mal had been shot.

“We left here yes­ter­day morn­ing. We were not in any­body’s way. We went on the land to do work. We not ex­pect­ing that be­cause we don’t trou­ble no­body. Them is good peo­ple,” he said.

Po­lice said a bi­cy­cle be­lieved to have been used by the sus­pect was lat­er found aban­doned off Manohar Trace. While ear­ly re­ports sug­gest­ed the gun­man may have been Venezue­lan, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said this has not been con­firmed. No mo­tive has yet been es­tab­lished.

An au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be con­duct­ed this week at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre. Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau Re­gion Three are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.