“Me nah guilty”, murder accused Rambarran Singh said in disbelief yesterday after a jury in the High Court unanimously convicted him of the murder of his brother at La Jalousie backdam in 2005.
Justice Brassington Reynolds sentenced Singh to death after the verdict was returned just after 6 pm last evening. Earlier the jury had deliberated for some two hours and later emerged for further directions from the trial judge.
Senior Counsel Bernard DeSantos spoke briefly after the sentence was handed down saying that though death by hanging is the sentence for murder, it is not mandatory. DeSantos said that though the precedent has not been set, he would try to pave the way for a sentence of life imprisonment for murder. DeSantos said he was aware this has no applicability in the court, but he asked for a record to be made.
Rambarran Singh was on trial for murdering his brother Mahadeo Singh called ‘Shantaram’ on March 22, 2005. The two had a long running dispute and on the day in question the accused is said to have knifed his brother to death just over the railway line at the backdam where they both cultivated rice.
Mahadeo Singh was stabbed multiple times; the post-mortem report revealed that he had 21 incised wounds.
One prosecution witness who testified recalled witnessing the brutal attack and told the jury that he saw when Singh attacked his brother. The witness said he saw when the wounds were inflicted and that he heard Singh telling his brother, “I gon kill ya ***today”.
But Rambarran Singh insisted that he did not harm his brother. He admitted going into the backdam but denied ever seeing him that day. He told jurors in an unsworn statement from the dock that his dead brother’s friends had come to the court and “give false evidence against me”. He said that the eyewitnesses came and testified to take suspicion from themselves.
Singh had marks on him when the police arrested him, but his story was that he worked hard in the fields and as such he would sustain cuts and bruises.
Rambarran also told jurors that his brother had enemies inside and outside their La Jalousie Village because it was discovered that he [deceased] was poisoning cows that grazed in the rice fields. Rambarran said that reports were at the Lenora Police station to this effect.
Singh said that he and his brother were not on speaking terms and as such he had no reason to kill him. He insisted that he was never at the railway line that day where his brother’s lifeless body was found.
But special prosecutor Jailall Kissoon urged jurors to remember that they had visited the scene of the crime, which he said, clearly shows that if the accused went to the backdam as he says then he would have had to cross the railway line to get home.
De Santos challenged the evidence of the prosecution eyewitnesses saying that the police had reason to detain one of them after the murder. Counsel argued throughout the trial that his client was innocent.