Sources say the killing of businessman Ganesh Ramlall on Sunday was most likely a `hit’ and nearly a week after the gunning down the police appear stumped in a case which is being seen as a test of the new administration’s intent to produce results.
How four gunmen were able to make it out of La Jalousie, West Coast Demerara on bicycles and disappear without a trace is still baffling. Villagers and relatives days later are uneasy but remain hopeful that the police will be able to find those responsible.
Contacted, Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum said that investigators are looking at all angles and are doing some “behind the scenes” work. Other police officials who Stabroek News spoke with said that while there are rumours, there is no concrete evidence to back them up and as such investigators have to work with what they have.
As it stands, police are working on the theory that Ramlall was killed during an armed robbery. Blanhum had said that the information from the dead man’s wife suggested that. Based on what was reported to the police, the gunmen made off with the businessman’s jewellery and a wallet after pumping several bullets into his body. A post-mortem examination revealed that he was shot six times; one of the bullets struck him to that head. Ballistics tests will soon be conducted on the warheads recovered from the man’s body.
Though police have said that they are investigating a robbery/murder there are some, inclusive of relatives, who are adamant that that Ramlall was executed. “When you look at everything you know that he get hit,” a source said stressing that the modus operandi of the gunmen lends credence to this theory.
One source said that the first sign that this was no robbery was the number of people who committed the act. “It makes no sense for four men to turn up to rob one man in the middle of the night… Three is a crowd much less four,” the source said. Asked if the men might have wanted to take precautions given that the businessman had a licensed firearm, the source posited that such a line of thinking made no sense.
The second sign, the source said, was that if the men were there to rob, they had no need to shoot Ramlall six times. “One shot to the head is all it would take…. Why shoot him so many times? That just tells me that they wanted to ensure that he was dead,” the source said adding that the men made no attempt to storm the man’s home to look for more valuables. “How much could his jewellery be worth or how much money his wallet could have contained to make this robbery job lucrative?” the source questioned.
It was suggested too that the gunmen might have familiarized themselves with the area as they had no problems exiting.
Meanwhile, a relative said that the situation has left them scared. “It has been a week and nothing…We don’t know what will happen next,” the relative said, while adding that people are making untrue statements on social media when they do not have all the facts and know nothing about Ramlall and his family.
The relative said that after so many days police have been unable to come up with a lead. This worries him. Asked if he is concerned that persons have been unable to definitively say in which direction the men fled, he said he has concluded that residents were so scared that night that unintentionally they would have opted to secure themselves as oppose to challenging the fleeing men or looking to see where they were heading.
The police have come in for serious criticism for failing to respond to a call for help. Ranks were said to have arrived at the scene more than an hour after a call was placed to the Den Amstel Police Station. A drive from the station to the residence is about five minutes.
Ramlall’s business started almost two decades ago when he began trading foodstuff from Berbice to Leonora. He then moved his business to Curacao where he sold products to various businesses. He also traded out of Panama and the United States.
After three years of this with his wife, the couple opened a stall in the Stabroek Market and then in 2008 they built the Regent Multiplex located at the corner of Regent and Wellington streets.
Orchestrated crime
A security source pointed out that it would appear that orchestrated crime is taking place. The source said it should be noted that even the government has signalled its belief that there are intellectual authors behind the country’s escalating crime situation.
It was noted that there are a lot of “old security men” in the new government and as such “they might be onto something… These are people who may know something about what is going on.”
Minister of State Joseph Harmon brought the issue up during his post-Cabinet press briefing last Wednesday. He said a draft strategy outlined by the President will have to be refined to ensure that the country is safe and that “the criminals and the criminal underworld and the intellectual authors of criminal activity understand that this government has a very strong resolve to root out crime wherever it exists.”
The source pointed to a number of attacks in a certain part of the country committed by gangs of armed men. It was pointed out that the home invasions by these gangs did not yield much in terms of valuables stolen. This, the source said, may point to an ulterior motive and it is here that the suspicion of orchestrated crimes come in.
The source said these attacks might be a means of causing fear and uneas so as to take citizens along a desired path of thinking.
The source went on to state that it is clear that the country has a law enforcement situation which has gotten “out of hand.” Pointing out that Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan was being attacked for enforcing an existing law, the source said it was clear that “nobody cares about the law. It is all about what is convenient to you.”
It was pointed too that the crime situation may also have a direct link to youth employment. In many instances young men can be seem liming at street corners all day. Persons like this, the source said, would be vulnerable to those in the criminal underworld who would rope them in, giving them small tasks to do such as being lookouts, before graduating them to hard core criminal activities.
“This will not be easy [the crime] for this government to handle,” the source said, adding that it seemed to be more than the customary July/August spike in crime.
Solving Ramlall’s murder, the source noted would be just a small part of the problem as the police need to find the underlying cause or causes of this crime situation.
