A LAND dispute between two families at Handsome Tree, Mahaica Creek yesterday escalated into a bloodbath just after noon, leaving one dead and two seriously injured.Dead is 24-year-old Ravo Nandkishore, while his 26-year-old brother, Davo, is in the Mahaicony Cottage Hospital under strict surveillance, and their 62-year-old father, Jai Nandkishore, is a patient at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH).

Of the two survivors, both of whom were severely chopped about their bodies, the father is said to be the more critical. Up to press time, doctors at the Georgetown Hospital were said to be battling to save his life, in spite of the multiple life-threatening wounds he sustained in the fracas.
As news of the tragedy spread, weeping relatives hastened to both hospitals to see the wounded, and learn more about the incident. Among those accompanying Jai to the Accident and Emergency (A&E) Unit of the GPHC was his sister, Seeta, his only sibling still in this country. Weeping bitterly, she prayed aloud that God would spare her brother’s life, and that of her nephew, Davo, since her other nephew, Ravo, had already been killed.

Relatives could not immediately say what had transpired at the scene of the dispute, but they said that the murder and wounding very likely took place at the Mahaica Creek backdam, and not on their residential lots. They recalled the existence of an age-old land dispute between the Nandkishore family and a neighbour, whose name was given as “Tony”. They also disclosed that the matter had been resolved in the Courts.
(By Shirley Thomas)