FORMER Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj passed away on Saturday afternoon at the Woodlands Hospital, Georgetown.
Gajraj, an attorney who served as Minister of Home Affairs from January 1999 to May 2005 under the Bharrat Jagdeo administration, died of a heart attack on Saturday morning, relatives confirmed.

In a statement issued on Saturday afternoon, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) said Gajraj will best be remembered for the “pivotal role he played as Home Affairs Minister in the fight against crime at a very challenging time of this nation’s history.”
The party said he was also a very loyal and dedicated supporter of the PPP and extended sympathy to his immediate family and relatives.

The former minister served as Guyana’s High Commissioner to India under the PPP administration and was also appointed High Commissioner to Bangladesh.
He resigned from the diplomatic posts and returned to Guyana in May 2015 from New Delhi when the APNU+AFC administration assumed office.

Prior to taking up his post in India, the former minister had resigned from the PPP Cabinet after reports had surfaced, linking him to the “Phantom” death squads led by convicted drug kingpin Shaheed “Roger” Khan.

During the crime wave which occurred after the 2002 Mash Day, Camp Street jailbreak and which spanned the years when Gajraj served as Home Affairs Minister, a number of unexplained deaths had occurred. Several young men remain missing today.

The existence of the death squad was first mentioned by former Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon during his weekly press briefings at the time. Later, information in the form of telephone records surfaced linking Gajraj to former hit man, the late Axel Williams.
Williams’ firearm upgrade on Gajraj’s recommendation raised several eyebrows at the time when men were being killed almost wantonly at the hands of the death squad, which was made up of mostly former policemen.

Gajraj was then made the subject of a presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI) set-up by Jagdeo to investigate the minister’s ties to the death squad. Former acting Chief Justice Ian Chang chaired the three- member body. Retired Major- General and former chairman of the Police Service Commission Norman McLean also sat on the body which later exonerated Gajraj from links to the death squad.

One victim of the death squad was Kwesi Williams, who was shot and killed by a group of men in full view of the public on the National Cultural Centre tarmac. The men had abducted Williams earlier and attempted to take him into the forested area aback the Botanical Gardens. It was in that area that the skeletal remains of the victims of the crime wave were dumped, allegedly at the hands of the death squad.

Eyebrows were also raised when it was discovered that wanted man, prison escapee Dale Moore and another man were shot dead a few doors away from the home of Gajraj in Lamaha Gardens at the height of the crime wave. This and a string of other mysterious occurrences during his term as Home Affairs Minister remain unsolved.