Today marks three years since Arjune Narine Singh was brutally gunned down at an unauthorised police roadblock at Middleton Street, Campbellville and his relatives are still searching for answers.
Relatives said they are furious since the authorities, particularly the police, are not paying much interest in the case which still has them in deep grief.
Speaking to Stabroek News recently, Singh’s father Narine said he had returned to Guyana to celebrate his only son’s birth and death anniversaries. The then 22-year-old was born on May 9 and died on May 14.
According to Narine, it is heartbreaking to know that an innocent life was taken and no justice was forthcoming.
He said that during the last year he has heard nothing positive from the police about the case and it appeared as though they are paying very little interest in the matter. The upset man said too that the government is not taking an interest in the death of the young University of Guyana graduate. He said that too often politicians make promises but once they are elected into office, they fall back on them.
The man opined that the government has a responsibility to do more to fight crime in Guyana. He felt that police ought to be making more efforts to find his son’s killer/s even if it meant offering a monetary reward. “With the monetary award they would get some information. People don’t want to come forward for nothing,” he said.
The grieving Narine said that from the onset he expected nothing to come out of the matter. “I feel somebody knows something… If you keep after it somebody will come up with something,” he stressed.
Narine recalled that the Commissioner of Police Henry Greene had told them that he was looking into the matter. “I think he did some work but he is not 100% behind it.”
During the interview he questioned why the police or the government was not responding to his many questions. He said that his family needs justice and although three years have passed, his wife is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and his daughter is scared to return to Guyana.
Narine told this newspaper he is the strongest one in his family, “but I don’t know how long I will survive this.”
He said that to commemorate his son’s birth anniversary, relatives visited an orphanage on the East Coast Demerara and fed the children. Some other charity work, Narine added, was done in his son’s honour.
A memorial service has been planned for today.
On May 14, 2008 around 9.30 pm on a narrow, poorly lit Middleton Street two policemen, one in uniform and the other in plainclothes, chose to stop a car and check documents belonging to its occupants, creating a traffic block owing to the manner in which the uniformed rank was positioned. This resulted in a backup of two vehicles — Singh’s and Larry Gursahai, who was behind Singh.
These vehicles along with a marked police car and another vehicle were squeezed together in a section of Middleton Street facing south.
Within a few minutes of them being stalled on the road, a gunman who exited a car on nearby Drury Lane approached and discharged a volley of bullets. Singh was fatally wounded and Gursahai also sustained injuries. The uniformed policeman fled the scene in the injured Gursahai’s vehicle, stopping for the man to exit after Gursahai refused to drive to the Kitty police station. The other policeman jumped into a nearby ditch and later emerged to call for backup.
Four months later, a senior police officer told this newspaper that the investigation into the incident was two-fold: the murder itself and the allegations made against the police. He had said while nothing new had come out of the murder investigation, the police were advised that the officers who were at the checkpoint be warned. He said too that one of the policemen was subjected to disciplinary action because he did not report that he was going out on duty that night. It was surmised that the two policemen had set up the roadblock to collect money from drivers.
