Armed bandits terrorized a Diamond Housing Scheme family yesterday in a pre-dawn home invasion, in which they stole approximately $1.5 million in cash and jewellery.
Chandini Phaghoo and her parents, Gajendra and Savitri Phaghoo, were all tied up by the three bandits, who broke into their East Bank Demerara home around 2 am.
According to Chandini, the three men were able to gain access to the ground floor of the house after they broke one of the windows on the northern side, unbolted the screws from the grill and squeezed themselves through.
Her father, she noted, was sleeping on the ground floor and he was awakened when one of the men jumped on to his chest and started hitting him to the head.
“One of them hit me in the head with a gun and when I try to fight back they started beating me more,” the man, who owns Anita’s Auto Spares on the Grove Public Road, explained.
He said after beating him, they ripped apart his bedsheet and used it to tie him.
After they were finished with him, one of the three invaders remained downstairs to watch him, while the other two proceeded upstairs, where his daughter and wife were located.
Chandini said that she was awakened by noises in the house. After she noticed that her mother’s bedroom lights were on, she decided to investigate and was greeted by the sight of two masked men trying to tie the woman’s limbs.
“I thought they didn’t see me and I was heading back to my room to get my phone… it so happens that one of them saw me and he came for me and they took my mom downstairs,” she said.
Chandini added that two of the men then demanded that she hand over cash and jewellery. “I told them we don’t have that at home and then they got aggressive and were pushing me around and stuff like that. And we did have some cash at home, so we gave them it and they demanded more,” Chandini said, while pointing out that even after she gave the men some $350,000 in cash, they proceeded to ransack the entire house. “They literally took an hour and a half to do these stuff. They went through piece by piece, small boxes and anything they could’ve opened they went inside,” the woman related.
Even though the men spent so much time searching and amassing jewellery and electronics, which she estimated to be valued at about $1.2 million, they kept on demanding more from her, while she said she kept on insisting that they did not have anything else.
The still-visibly shaken woman noted that one of the men received a phone call and she overheard him saying to the caller that they had not been able to gather enough valuables and cash and so they would have to kidnap her.
At this point, Chandini related that she became extremely scared and desperate. “It was around 3 am by then and I told one of them that the neighbour would be waking up and they continued searching everywhere, even the kitchen. They got a bit agitated and then a little after they received two more calls and they kept saying that they didn’t have enough and would have to kidnap me for real,” she said.
After the third phone call, she explained, the two men that were watching her tied her and then asked about keys for the cars and the gate. She said she was able to distract one of the men and confuse him about which key opened the gate. She surmised that out of frustration, the men escaped with their loot but without one of the vehicles.
“…After they tied me up the two others went outside to check the vehicles and then came back inside and one of them told me that they are coming back and then after no one came back, I decided to check the glass door and I saw they had left,” the woman said.
After freeing herself, she untied her parents and then alerted the neighbours and tried to call the police. The family said the police took some 20 minutes to arrive at the scene. “At first, we called about three times and did not get through and then when we did we heard there were no vehicles,” Gajendra said, while expressing his discontent at the Diamond Police Station.
Even after some ranks were sent to their residence, the family related that they had to pay for transportation for the investigator to visit the home and do his initial investigations.
It was not the first time that bandits had invaded their home as they were previously attacked some five years ago. Additionally, their store in Grove was broken into in January and December last year. “We are scared and we don’t know what to do but we will have to add some security measures so that we can feel safe,” Gajendra said yesterday.
