A DANGEROUS trend is evolving, locally, whereby ‘biological brothers’ are regularly arming themselves with cutlasses and teaming up to unleash violent attacks against persons with whom they have a misunderstanding.

At least three victims of such heinous attacks are currently in-patients at the Surgical Ward of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, having been brutally chopped and disfigured in separate instances by brothers who were armed with sharpened cutlasses.
The most recent victim is 34-year-old Naresh Balkissoon, a fisherman and resident of Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara, who was brutally chopped by two brothers from the same village on Wednesday at the Mon Repos tarmac.

Having sustained a gaping facial wound that has split his jaw open from lips to ear, and other wounds to the head, back and arm, Balkissoon was rushed to the GPHC desperately clinging to life, and has since had two surgeries; the first of which began at 23:00 hrs on the Wednesday of his admission and lasted until 03:00hrs the following day, and the other which took place that Thursday morning at approximately 06:00 hrs (three hrs later).

Ensconced on his hospital bed and reflecting on his ordeal, Balkissoon, who still has difficulty speaking, said of the brothers: “They chop meh ‘til they see meh cyan’ move no moh.”

His relatives who were on the scene recalled that the two brothers began chopping Balkissoon while he was at his sister’s ‘Fish & Chips’ stall, and they pursued him onto the roadway and continued chopping him even after he had fallen and lay helpless on the road. “They never stopped (chopping him) until the traffic started honking and backing up,” one horrified relative recalled.

Naresh related that the altercation started at around 18:00 hrs when it was getting dark. He was at his sister Vanita Dowding’s stall on the tarmac when two men whom he recognised pounced on Vanita. He said he figured they had come to rob her shop, since he had owed them $1,000 and was not yet in a position to repay them.
The elder brother asked him for a cigarette, but he did not offer the man any, whereupon the man, in a bullying manner, grabbed Naresh’s packet of cigarettes from him. Naresh retaliated by retrieving the cigarettes from the man. The man went home but, moments later, returned with a sharpened cutlass, which he brandished at Naresh.

Naresh said the man’s mother was nearby, and she urged her sons to chop him with the cutlass.

Seeing what was developing, Vanita began screaming and begged them not to chop Naresh, but, according to her, one of the brothers put the cutlass to her neck and warned that, if she didn’t shut up, they would chop her up.
Naresh’s relatives said that although other people were on the tarmac, nobody intervened in the altercation because the men were firing chops ‘like if they head ain’t good.’

And recently, 27-year-old Richard Atkinslow of Bartica came under attack from two brothers in his community following their refusal to return an item he had given them to keep. Tempers flared when he went to collect his item, and the brothers allegedly began chopping Atkinslow until he fell to the ground helpless and appeared to be dead.

He sustained, to both legs and arms, multiple chops that cut into the bone. He said he was advised that the wounds had become infected because of the protracted period he had spent lying on the ground where he was attacked.
About three to four hours later, the police arrived at the scene and took him to the Bartica Hospital. He was shortly transferred to the GPHC.

On the same night of his attack, 19-year-old William Hendricks of Canterbury Walk, Beterverwagting, East Coast Demerara was viciously chopped by two brothers who “double-banked” him at Ogle Street in the village during a game of football.

His incident stemmed from a misunderstanding over the ball game, but a scuffle ensued, and one of the brothers allegedly ran into a yard, picked up a sharpened cutlass and returned with it. The two brothers allegedly used the weapon to double-bank him, and Hendricks sustained vicious chops about the body, which caused injury to his left eye as well.
Written By Shirley Thomas