– PM inconclusive because of decomposition
`Is just mommy I had and now she gone…’
A post-mortem examination performed on the body of Shira Khan, which was found in a trench a short distance from her Unity, Mahaica home, was inconclusive because of the advanced decomposition of the body.
Relatives of the 41-year-old woman were forced to bury her on Wednesday afternoon, and for her only child, Tereza Persaud, the hardest thing is that she does not and will never know how her mother died.
Speaking to Stabroek News shortly before the simple funeral was held for her mother at the Beterverwagting burial ground, the young woman said the last time her mother was seen was on Friday morning last when she left for work at a gas station in Unity village. Persaud explained that she did not live with her mother as she is married and lives with her husband and baby daughter at Diamond, East Bank Demerara. But she said she spoke to her mother on Friday.
Khan lived with her mother Ramdai Ramlochan in Unity. According to Persaud, her grandmother told her that her mother had indicated that she was going to visit the man she was seeing in Mon Repos on Friday afternoon and would have spent the weekend there.
The young woman said her mother shared an off-and-on relationship with the man she described as her stepfather and in recent times she had spent most of her weekends at his home. Over the weekend, Persaud said, she tried calling her mother several times but the phone kept going to voicemail.
“My grandmother didn’t have no number for me because I change me SIM card so I didn’t know she missing. But I know something wrong when I didn’t get through because we does talk almost every day,” the young woman said. She said on Monday she decided to call her mother’s neighbour’s phone and she was told her mother was missing.
When she was told her mother had said she would have been spending the weekend with her lover, Persaud said, she telephoned the man who was not very accommodating. She said he told her that he was at work and she should call back later.
She then received the dreadful news about her mother’s body being found on Tuesday morning. Police said in a release that the body was found around 8.30 am.
“My mommy dead and I don’t know how she dead and I would never know. Now me don’t have mother and I don’t even know if it was foul play. Is just me alone now,” the woman lamented, close to tears. She said her mother had suffered from diabetes and sometimes would be very ill. She said she wondered if her mother might have fallen into the trench and drowned. But she questioned why the body was not seen before as she was missing since Friday.
“She always tell me that when I deh good then she could just go long she way and now she gone in truth,” the young woman said.
She said she did not believe her ‘stepfather’ had anything to do with her mother’s death although she did say they did not share a very good relationship.
“Is like they use to cuss and buse all the time and then when she didn’t able no more she use to move out and then she would move in back. And the move in and out thing use to get to me and that and all make I just move on with me life,” Persaud said. However, she said, she never saw her stepfather hit her mother.
She said it was about a year ago that her mother moved out of the Mon Repos home for good but still visited the home on weekends.
She said her stepfather eventually told her that while her mother was expected at his home over the weekend she never showed and when he tried calling her he also got her voicemail.
There were reports that a shop owner in the area had told neighbours that she saw Khan at the Mon Repos Market on Saturday morning. However, Persaud said, when the police questioned the shop owner, she said that she never said any such thing and that she did not even know Khan.
“That part is strange because mommy use to buy from she and even credit… How could you give somebody credit from you shop and you don’t know them?” Persaud questioned. But she said she is leaving everything in the hands of the Lord.
“The hardest thing is not to know how she dead and I can’t even see she body because the body so decompose them say they can’t open the coffin.”
Persaud said she had no connection with her father as her mother left him when she was one week old. They reconciled when she was four years old but the relationship did not last. “Is just mommy I had and now she gone…”
