Four men died after eating a meal on Sunday night at a Barrackpore house.

Winston Seelal, 55, Mahadeo Roopchand, 40, and Nazim Mohammed, 40, were dead before the Emergency Medical Services ambulance arrived. Ramdeo Jugmohan, a grandfather of two, died while undergoing treatment at the San Fernando General Hospital.

Police said yesterday the men spent the evening cooking a meal and drinking home-made wine at Seelal’s small wooden shack at Rampersad Trace, off Rochard Douglas Road, Barrackpore.

But several hours later neighbours saw them lying on the grass outside the house.

Police searched the house, but found no evidence of poison. Nevertheless, they took away four glasses and samples of water from a steel barrel for forensic testing. A bottle containing a chemical substance was also seized.

Seelal lived alone in the wood and galvanise house. Mohammed, his childhood friend, lived a short distance away. Mohammed’s common-law wife walked out of the marital home with their two children two days ago, police said.

Roopchand’s sister, Parbatie Ramdeo, said: ’My brother left home yesterday morning to go and lime by his friend. And then in the night someone came and told us that he was dead. I don’t know what happened but I am certain that it was not suicide.’

Roopchand, a welder, lived with his mother, Boodanie, at Debie Trace, Barrackpore. ’He was a quiet man who kept to himself. He was not married and had no children, but he was happy. I believe someone did this to them, but I cannot say who because they were really quiet people. They had no arguments with anyone,’ she said.

Jugmohan, a carpenter, lived at Ramsingh Trace, Penal, with his wife, Brenda, and their son, Ryan. His 25-year-old daughter, Mindy Bassant, was baffled by his death.

’I think he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He knew the other men, but he was not friends with them. My father left home around 3 p.m. and said he was going for a walk. He usually walked on Sunday evenings and when he did not return we started looking for him,’ she said.

During the search they were told that their father was lying at the side of the road in Barrackpore.

’When we went there he was frothing and we thought he had suffered a stroke. The ambulance take him to the hospital and the nurses told us to leave and come back in the morning. But within 15 minutes he was dead,’ Bassant said.

Her father, she said, was a simple man who enjoyed spending time with his two grandchildren.

’He also wanted to build a flat house for him and mummy to live and he was sending me to do a nursing course. He was the best daddy anyone could ask for. I know it was not suicide, so I believe that if someone mixed poison it was not for my father, he was just at the wrong place,’ she said.

The bodies were removed to the Forensic Science Centre in St James, but up to late yesterday the autopsies had not yet been performed.

Homicide detectives are continuing investigations.

Two years ago, a man died and two fell violently ill, after they unknowingly drank poison during a Hindu prayer service at Ramsubad Trace, Rochard Road, Penal.