WHY WOULD CHANDOR RATHOD WANT TO BE BACK IN WAIPUKURAU? (Letter printed in Central Hawke's Bay Mail, March 10)

This letter to CHB Mail was prompted by Mayor Peter Butler's comment on Chandor Rathod, who in 2004 was found not guilty on reasons of insanity of murdering his wife.

In an interview with CHB Mail former CHB district councillor Hilary Pedersen, who had befriended Rathod, described him as 'a gentle man' whose violence towards his wife was 'completely out of character'.

Rathod has left New Zealand  to return to India for a funeral, prompting Mayor Butler to remark that 'we don't need types like him living in Central Hawke's Bay. We don't want him back in Waipukurau.'

 

Is it likely Rathod would want to be back in Waipukurau?

 

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR, CHB MAIL, MARCH 10:

I’ve never in my life had such generous, charming service from a retailer than from Chandor Rathod in the Racecourse Rd Dairy, Waipukurau.

Wanting spices for a curry, I remembered someone saying they’d smelt wonderful aromas coming from the Sunset Dairy’s kitchen. I asked Chandor, at the counter, where I could buy what I needed.

He disappeared and returned with his smiling wife, smiling grandmother and children and all the spices I wanted, individually wrapped and named, and refused any payment.

If our community had accorded him more of the respect he’d enjoyed as a banker in his home country, had considered how he must have felt, serving icecreams while his wife earned a decent income as a veterinarian, and had extended to the family the compassion and friendship shown them by Hilary Pedersen, that heartbreaking tragedy and sad blot on our Central Hawke’s Bay escutcheon might have been avoided.