An East Coast Demerara (ECD) man who was on Sunday night badly beaten by members of a Community Policing Group (CPG) was yesterday a patient at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) receiving medical attention after sustaining six chop wounds to the head, one to his hand and several abrasions to the legs.
Thirty-five-year-old Rafeek Shakur, a carpenter, told Stabroek News that about 12 pm on Sunday night he was summoned out of his house by three persons whom he identified as members of the CPG operating in the Chateau Margot area.
According to Shakur, he has done nothing wrong and cannot explain the reason for the blows he was made to suffer at the hands of the lawmen.
The injured man said that once the CPG members had gotten to his 17 Chateau Margot, ECD house, he approached them in a bid to see what it was that they wanted. Once confronted by them, Shakur said that one of the three men proceeded to handcuff him. The man then said that he began resisting arrest, asking what he had done to warrant such action by them.
The man, who was evidently in pain, said that after resisting, another of the members handed a cutlass to the one who was trying to handcuff him and they then began indiscriminately chopping him about his body.
Shakur told this newspaper that he had gotten out of prison as recently as Saturday after spending a nine-month sentence for the use of threatening language to the said group of men.
The father of two said that in November last, the men had arrested him claiming that he was wanted in connection with a robbery but he said he knew nothing of such a matter.
Shakur disclosed that at the time of his detention last year, he started using expletives to the CPG members and began threatening to kill them because he was angry that they had been accusing him of a robbery he knew nothing about. He added that he thought that the matter was all over since he had gone to prison.
According to him the latest beating by the men comes as a surprise.
