Caption: Selwyn Richardson
- The Latest Killing: Criminal defence attorney Taradath Singh was shot dead on 27 October 2026 in Charlieville, just a month after surviving an earlier shooting at his Cunupia home.
- A Troubling Pattern: Singh is the sixth member of the legal fraternity to be murdered over the past three decades—joining Selwyn Richardson, Dr Wesley Debideen, Dana Seetahal SC, Randall Hector, and Kumari Baksh—with not a single conviction recorded to date.
- First-Hand Intimidation: Author and attorney Saira Lakhan recounts how her own San Fernando chambers were firebombed twice in late 2025; despite providing CCTV footage and leads to the police, no one has been charged over a year later.
- A Call for State Action: Lakhan warns that this culture of impunity threatens the independence of both the Bar and the Bench, calling on the State to provide properly resourced investigations, effective protection for threatened attorneys, and accountability for investigative failures.
On 27 October 2026, criminal defence attorney Taradath Singh was shot dead outside a gym in Charlieville. A month earlier, a gunman had fired on him at his home in Cunupia. He survived that first attack. According to the information presently available, no one was arrested in connection with it. Approximately a month later, he was killed.
His name now joins a list this country should be ashamed to keep: Selwyn Richardson, Wesley Debideen, Dana Seetahal, Randall Hector, Kumari Baksh, and Taradath Singh. Six members of the legal profession killed over three decades, with no convictions reported in any of these cases to date.
Let me be precise about the record, because precision is exactly what the system has failed to give these families.
Former Attorney General Selwyn Richardson was murdered outside his Cascade home in June 1995. Dr Wesley Debideen was shot at Grand Bazaar in August 2013. Dana Seetahal SC, a former Independent Senator, prosecutor, and teacher to generations of attorneys, was killed in Woodbrook in May 2014. In Ms Seetahal’s case, 10 men were charged and committed to stand trial. Yet, more than 12 years after her murder, the proceedings have not, to my knowledge, resulted in a verdict. Such prolonged delay diminishes public confidence in a system already struggling to retain it.
On New Year’s Eve 2024, special prosecutor Randall Hector was gunned down outside his church, reportedly in the presence of his wife and children. In September 2026, the Attorney General informed Parliament that an individual alleged to have ordered his killing had been in detention since 2025. Yet the reported absence of a murder charge in that matter leaves troubling questions unanswered. In a separate case, attorney Kumari Baksh and her husband, Nasheed, were discovered bound and murdered in their Cumuto home. Their family, too, deserves answers. And now, Taradath Singh.
I do not write about this from a distance. Before dawn on 25 September 2025, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the front door of my own chambers on Lewis Street, San Fernando. It burned for about two hours. On 22 October 2025, someone climbed my firm’s fence at 3.30 am and placed two more incendiary devices—one at the door and one on the electrical panel beside my office window. The chambers occupy a wooden building, and our firm is staffed entirely by women. We were fortunate that the fires did not spread.
We did what citizens are told to do. We preserved our camera footage, gave the police leads, and waited. More than a year later, no one has been charged in connection with these attacks. I do not say this lightly, and I say it with respect for the many officers who serve honestly. I say it because the public is entitled to know that when a lawyer’s office is firebombed twice, that file can also become a cold one.
Each of these cases sends the same disturbing message: those who target lawyers may escape accountability. The implication is that killing a lawyer is safe. The gunman weighs his chances of arrest, the organiser weighs his chances of a charge, and the person who pays weighs his chances of a trial. In Trinidad and Tobago, every one of those calculations has come out in their favour.
There is something profoundly unsettling about watching these killings accumulate, year after year, without resolution. Each unanswered death emboldens those who believe violence can silence an individual without consequence. As advocates, we undertake difficult cases, challenge powerful interests, and defend unpopular clients, trusting that we can discharge our duties without fear.
Yet if those who argue cases can be targeted with such apparent impunity, what assurance remains for those who decide them? Every unresolved killing threatens the confidence and independence upon which our justice system depends. Those who serve at the Bar table and on the Bench are watching how the State responds. So, too, are those who may seek to silence them.
The State must respond with urgency and resolve. Condolences and assurances are no longer enough. We need properly resourced investigations, meaningful updates to grieving families, effective protection for threatened members of the legal profession, and independent scrutiny where concerns arise about investigative failures.
Section 4 of our Constitution recognises the rights to life and to the protection of the law. Those guarantees must extend beyond the courtroom and carry meaning for those whose lives are threatened. As advocates, we devote our careers to securing these rights for others. It is long past time the State demonstrated the same resolve in securing them for us.
Six names. No verdicts. The seventh must not be met with the same silence.
About the Author: Saira Lakhan is the Managing Partner of Magnus Attorneys-at-Law and a senior lawyer with over 15 years of experience representing a diverse clientele before the courts of Trinidad and Tobago and the UK Privy Council. Specialising in civil litigation, family law, and alternative dispute resolution, she holds an LLB from the University of the West Indies, an LEC from the Hugh Wooding Law School, and an MBA from Anglia Ruskin University. In addition to her extensive practice, Lakhan is a Certified Mediator and Arbitrator who currently serves as President of the Assembly of Southern Lawyers and sits on the Disciplinary Committee of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
