RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

T&T cit­i­zens need to be giv­en a fight­ing chance to pro­tect them­selves if the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties can­not do so.

These were the words of Pun­dit Baldeo Ma­haraj at the fu­ner­al of Dar­ren Nand­lal, 33, who was yes­ter­day de­scribed as a “hero hus­band.”

Nand­lal, an em­ploy­ee at the Cen­tral Bank in Port-of-Spain, was killed last Thurs­day af­ter he shield­ed his wife from armed in­trud­ers at his in-laws’ Cara­pichaima home.

The gun­men al­leged­ly asked for his wife and when they at­tempt­ed to pur­sue her, Nand­lal con­front­ed them and took the bul­let meant for his wife.

Dur­ing the fu­ner­al ser­vice at Ko­rea Vil­lage, Cara­pichaima, it was re­vealed that dur­ing a po­lice com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing in the Cou­va North con­stituen­cy a few weeks ago, Nand­lal’s wife spoke out about the up­surge in crime in the area. She re­port­ed­ly called for more po­lice pa­trols, in­clud­ing re­in­stal­la­tion of the Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trols.

But yes­ter­day, Pun­dit Ma­haraj - who said he was not be­ing po­lit­i­cal - said he agreed with com­ments made by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for cit­i­zens to “emp­ty the clip’ on at­tack­ers dur­ing home in­va­sions.

“I agree, I to­tal­ly agree...,” he said.

“There is a time for peace and a time for war. So, if for some rea­son the au­thor­i­ties can­not pro­tect you, then let them give you a chance to pro­tect your­self. If this young man had a chance to pro­tect him­self, in­stead of him be­ing re­moved out of the house that event­ful day in a body bag, they would have been re­mov­ing the ban­dits out of that house in body bags.”

Ma­haraj called on cit­i­zens to let their voic­es be heard.

Swa­mi Prakashanan­da, of the Chin­maya Mis­sion, al­so said he agreed with Pun­dit Ma­haraj. How­ev­er, he re­mind­ed that both par­ents (moth­er and fa­ther) had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to prop­er­ly raise their chil­dren and en­sure they do not be­come crim­i­nals.

Swa­mi Prakashanan­da said, “The scrip­tures say pro­tect­ing your­self is a valid op­tion. A po­tent op­tion that comes to mind is the crim­i­nal and who’s re­spon­si­ble that the crim­i­nal turned out to be a crim­i­nal. When (a) child born in a hos­pi­tal two par­ents sup­posed to take care of that child, if those par­ents had not failed in that du­ty and had per­formed (that) du­ty prop­er­ly, this na­tion would not be in the state it is.”

Mean­while, Nand­lal’s su­per­vi­sor at Cen­tral Bank, Kendall Cuffy, in pay­ing trib­ute to him, said Nand­lal be­gan his ca­reer in 2012 as an as­so­ciate pro­fes­sion­al and was fur­ther recog­nised for con­tri­bu­tions and made per­ma­nent as an Ex­am­in­er 1. Nand­lal, Cuffy said, was re­spon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing the Cen­tral Bank’s An­nu­al Re­port.

“He was a bea­con of kind­ness with com­pas­sion. He would have light up a room with his in­fec­tious smile. He was our res­i­dent Bol­ly­wood star. He was a friend and a trust­ed col­league...a men­tor to young uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents,” Cuffy re­called.

Nand­lal’s cousins re­mem­bered his un­con­di­tion­al love for his wife and for na­ture.