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Monday, July 28, 2025

Murder under SoE: Family of murdered man calls for curfew

by

8 days ago
20250720

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of Ryan Bharatt are call­ing for a cur­few to be im­ple­ment­ed af­ter he was mur­dered some­time be­tween Fri­day night and ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, re­port­ed­ly for re­fus­ing to pay ex­tor­tion mon­ey.

Bharatt, 35, a cousin of mur­dered court clerk An­drea Bharatt, was shot once in the head. Po­lice said that around 12:48 am, Cpl Caruth and oth­er of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to a re­port of a shoot­ing at Church Street, Cara­po, where they found Bharatt. He was tak­en to the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal but was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

Po­lice said that around 12:30 am, the truck dri­ver and busi­ness­man went out­side to move his white Nis­san Navara when he was shot.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at their Cara­po home, Bharatt’s moth­er, Omar­lee Bharatt, and his aunt, Kawlee Dip­nar­ine, said they be­lieve he might still be alive to­day if a cur­few had been in place.

Bharatt de­scribed her last of five chil­dren as her ba­by and called on the po­lice and au­thor­i­ties to do more.

“Be­sides that, from the time they hear about the shoot­ing that took place, they could have at least blocked the ar­eas and sur­round­ed the ar­eas so they would find who­ev­er it is be­cause it ain’t no­body come from South or Grande. It’s some­body close by be­cause no ve­hi­cle didn’t come.”

Bharatt said she will find jus­tice through God, not the ju­di­cial sys­tem, and de­scribed her son’s killers as cow­ards.

“They just let him have it, and the way they do it, shoot my child from be­hind, be­cause they are a cow­ard. They were sup­posed to face him face to face and let him know, not from be­hind. What they do there is not a good thing.”

She said that af­ter her son told her about threats he re­ceived, he was pre­pared to die.

“A cou­ple of months ago, about three or four months ago, he said to me, ‘Mom­my, they want to take me down. Mom­my, I’m sor­ry, but in case of any­thing, you will do this and do that for me. Mom­my, you know, I love you.’ He tell his fa­ther the same thing. He take his sis­ter, in­di­vid­ual, and he tell them that his life has been threat­ened a few times.”

Dip­nar­ine de­scribed her nephew as small in stature but big-heart­ed. She said he was al­ways gen­er­ous and will­ing to do any­thing for the peo­ple he loved. Strug­gling to hold back tears, she asked why some­one would take his life.

“I can’t func­tion. Life is too short now. You don’t know what to think, where to go. Why would peo­ple just kill peo­ple? I don’t know when it will ever have an end to this thing. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m re­al­ly sor­ry. I think that we need a po­lice post, a lot of po­lice pres­ence in this vil­lage, in this par­tic­u­lar vil­lage.”

Apart from An­drea Bharatt, the fam­i­ly has lost oth­er rel­a­tives to vi­o­lence, with at least two mur­ders oc­cur­ring in Cara­po. In the past four years, both Christi­no and Dar­ren Per­reira were fa­tal­ly shot. Last year, Christi­no, 55, was shot eight times while sit­ting in his car. He lived on Race Course Road, Cara­po, Ari­ma—the same home where his broth­er Dar­ren was killed four years ear­li­er.

Dip­nar­ine said she fears vis­it­ing her sib­lings who still live in the com­mu­ni­ty be­cause of the on­go­ing vi­o­lence.

“I my­self afraid to come and vis­it my broth­er and my sis­ter af­ter cer­tain hours. I don’t want to come here. There’s fam­i­ly all around. And if they have a wed­ding or a func­tion, you’re afraid. You’re afraid af­ter hours. You have to cut short your en­joy­ment and just run be­cause it’s not safe in this vil­lage. I’m sor­ry to say, I don’t know why the po­lice and them can­not put an end to this. Why they don’t do more pa­trols? I don’t know if the po­lice and them afraid of the ban­dits and them.”

Dip­nar­ine added, “Many times that race­track where we used to walk from here to go to school in Cara­po and come back, you can’t do that any more. You’ll get peo­ple with heads so and bod­ies so. So many times, it’s too much. “Why Ari­ma is get­ting so bad? Why it’s so ter­ri­ble? Why it’s so hor­ri­ble? Why, why we can’t get more po­lice, re­al po­lice, re­al ac­tion to get rid of all these guns and all these am­mu­ni­tion that these peo­ple hold­ing? It’s not a broth­er and sis­ter love in the vil­lage any more, it’s not.”

Guardian Me­dia called and mes­saged Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro re­gard­ing the calls for a cur­few and in­creased pa­trols in the area, but up to late yes­ter­day, there was no re­sponse.


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