A GANG of five bandits on Sunday night invaded the home of an East Berbice couple, beating and robbing them of them of an undisclosed sum of money and other effects. The robbery reportedly occurred around 22:00 hrs at the couple’s Lot 257 Number Two Village, East Coast Berbice home.
Sixty-two-year-old Patrick Mangra told reporters that he and his wife had just returned home from a Chinese restaurant when they were attacked.
“We went in and sit down under the house, not ready to go upstairs as yet, and I see three men running coming from the back with their face tied up,” Mangra said.
As they held on to him, Mangra said, he tried to fight them off, but was unsuccessful.
“They tear off the vest I was wearing, and tied my hands, he said. “I fight with them. Then one of them say, ‘Hit him!’ “After two hours, I wake up and I see my foot tie, and everything in the house gone.”
He’s not sure whether any of the men had a firearm, as he did not see them with one; so he could not say what they used to hit him with.
His wife, Revina Seeberchan, meanwhile, was accosted by two other masked men who’d entered the yard, and taken into the house where she was told no harm would come to her if she cooperated.
Having gotten her assurance, they proceeded to help themselves to whatever money, local or foreign, they could find; they, however, reneged on their promise not to hurt her, they beat and trussed her up when she was not forthcoming enough about where the jewellery and money were.
Among items the intruders took away were the couple’s passports, three cellular phones, three gold chains and a bracelet, and an 82-inch television set.
According to the couple, the ordeal lasted close to two hours, and that it was the first time they were robbed since returning home for good from neighbouring Suriname back in May.
Following the incident, Mangra was admitted as a patient at the New Amsterdam Hospital, while Seeberchan was treated at the same institution and sent away. Up to press time, the couple was still trying to ascertain what items were taken away. Police are investigating. No arrests have been made as yet.

BICYCLE BANDITS
Meanwhile, in another incident, a cane harvester was severely beaten by bandits during an attack at Rose Hall on Saturday, police have confirmed.
Seenarine Kalimuldon is now a patient at the New Amsterdam Hospital, nursing fractures to both of his arms. Kalimuldon told this newspaper that he was in New Amsterdam to do shopping with his family when the bandits pounced on him around 18:45 hrs.
“We went together, and then I stop to buy credit,” the 53-year-old of Chesney, Corentyne related. According to him, as soon as he left the shop, the two men who were following him on bicycles began closing in on him.
“I start to ride fast, but they catching me up, so I decide to turn through one of them fine street to meet up with meh children faster, but they ride straight behind me.
“I don’t know where they get a piece ah wood so fast, and clap one lash pon me and break mi hand two places.”
The man said he collapsed, and one of the bandits ran through his pocket and took away $20,000 along with a cellular phone and his bicycle. He said by the time he got up, the bandits had already escaped.
He said he tried chasing behind them, but to no avail. The matter has since been reported to the police.