NARINE Bahadur, 53, a taxi driver/farmer of Lot 374 Belle West Housing Scheme, West Bank Demerara, was detained on Tuesday at Wales Police Station after the police received a report that he had chopped a ‘junkie’ who was raiding his plantain farm under cover of darkness.

However, Bahadur’s relatives are maintaining that he did not commit such an offence.

The man’s wife, Ena Bahadur, told this publication yesterday that they have a plot next door to where they do farming but recently they have been unable to reap their produce because a known drug addict from the area would take away the young plantains by the bunch under the cover of darkness.

She said that on Monday, around 1:00 am, they were aroused by the incessant barking of their dogs and got up to investigate. Her husband armed himself with a cutlass and her son had a torchlight as they went over to their farm while she and her daughter-in-law stood in the verandah.

At the farm they encountered a drug addict, a villager, who was spotted among some plantain trees and he attacked Bahadur and his son with a knife.

However, the man was caught and dealt several lashes to the body with the cutlass by Bahadur after which the intruder escaped by scaling their fence and their neighbours’ fence.

Mrs. Bahadur added that they were about to visit the Wales Police Station to make a report of the incident but their car could not start during a heavy downpour and so they went to file a complaint on Tuesday morning.

The woman said that when her husband showed up at the Wales Police Station he was locked up after the ranks told him that the villager, who has been raiding their farm, was in the hospital nursing three chop wounds to the body.

Mrs. Bahadur maintained that her husband did not chop the man and she could not understand how he received such wounds since he was only given “about five broadside lashes to the body” with the cutlass.

She said that on Tuesday morning before they reported the matter the man’s relatives came in front of their house and began verbally abusing them and even threatened to kill them. They removed the intruder’s long boots, a cap and a shirt he had abandoned during his bid to escape the farm.

Mrs. Bahadur said that her husband is very hard working and he was only protecting their property. Since they began planting, she added, they have been unable to sell anything because the ‘junkie’ would pick everything that can be sold on their farm to satisfy his drug habit.

She noted also that the village is plagued by drug addicts, who roam the place during the night taking whatever they can find to sell to buy drugs and the man who raided their farm has been fingered in several incidents and is known to the police.

Her husband had survived a carjacking recently when he was forced to take two bandits, who were armed with a gun, from Canal Number One Polder to Vreed-en-Hoop, then to Best Road.

The men who had pretended to be customers relieved him of his day’s earnings but he managed to escape from the car which was found abandoned at Crane Old Road.

(By Michel Outridge)