Salimoon Rahaman is appealing to the joint services to “come clean” about whether rogue elements of the army could have been involved in the boat accident in the Essequibo River that killed her husband and a neighbour and left her ten-year-old son missing.
“I just want justice, I don’t know what else to do but I searching for me son every day and nobody ent helping me,” Rahaman, the mother of missing Ricky Jainarine said yesterday. She says she believes that members of the coast guard may have had something to do with the August 11 boat mishap, following their involvement in the kidnapping, robbery and murder of 24-year-old Dweive Kant Ramdass last Thursday. The three army ranks along with others appeared in court yesterday.
Rahaman travelled to George-town yesterday from her Hog Island home in an effort to seek answers but her attempt to meet with Commissioner of Police Henry Greene was unsuccessful. Instead, she met with officials from the force’s Office of Professional Responsibility, since, according to her, the lawmen in Essequibo have not been very helpful in the search for her son.
The woman yesterday appealed to the army and the police to state whether they questioned the three coast guards about their possible involvement in the August 11 boat mishap. She said while there is someone who claimed to have seen the coast guard vessel next to the boat that her reputed husband and others were in, she is yet to speak to that person and she appealed for the person to come forward and give a statement to the police.
Neither the police nor the army has officially said if they are investigating the possibility that the three coast guard members may have been involved in the incident, even though Commodore Gary Best during a meeting with Ramdass’s relatives last week Saturday dismissed the allegations as just “speculations.”
Rahaman yesterday questioned the alleged three-day docking of the coast guard vessel for maintenance following the August 11 accident and contended that the boat her reputed husband and son were in had green paint markings following the accident suggesting that it had collided with a boat with green paint. The coast guard boat is painted green. She said those are all leads for the police to investigate and called on them to provide answers for her.
Relatives of 45-year-old Jainarine Dinanauth and Henry Gibson, the same age, had initially suspected that the men’s boat was robbed on August 11. Dinanauth, who had only recently come out of the interior, reportedly wore jewellery which was missing when he was found, and had on his person $300,000. The body of ten-year-old Jainarine is yet to be found.
The post-mortem examinations on the men revealed that they died of drowning and police sources had indicated that it meant that the men were injured in an accident and they died. There was no sign of the other boat involved. Dinanauth’s licensed firearm was still on his person when his body was found.
Rahaman said she believes in her heart that the men were robbed and murdered. The men were making the 30-minute ride from Parika to Hog Island when the mishap occurred.