– court hears
A mechanic was yesterday remanded to prison after pleading guilty with an explanation to unlawfully assaulting his wife, Aneica Rupnarain, on February 15 at Sideline Dam, La Penitence.
Thirty-one year old Andrew Rupnarain told the court, “I never really touched my wife physically…” According to him he had gone out on Valentine’s night with some friends and returned home drunk in the early morning hours the next day.
“I ask her to go upstairs and sleep and she tell me to sleep in the car and I misbehave,” Rupnarain said. When asked by Acting Chief Magistrate, Melissa Robertson what he meant by misbehaving Rupnarain replied, “I quarrel and go on but I didn’t physically touch her.”
Rupnarain told the court that he was told by the police that even finger pointing is considered common assault.
However, his wife gave the court a different version of that day’s incident. She said he had gone to a neighbour’s social gathering on Valentine’s night and after she heard the party was over, she called her husband and was told that he was at another place with friends.
She said he told her to go to bed. She did but could not sleep so around 1.30 am she called him again and after realising that he was drunk, she said, she told him to sleep in the car. This angered him and he told her he was going to “show her what man can do”.
He came up the stairs and tried to enter the house, she said, so she opened the door and threw water in his face to sober him up but he “scramble” her.
Becoming emotional during her recollection of the night, Mrs Rupnarain sobbed, “I don’t want he anymore, I want he to move out”.
She said it was not the first time that something like this had happened. She told the court that previously he had pulled a knife on her and asked her if she does not read the paper and see “what happens to those women”.
The sobbing woman told the court that her husband has a drinking problem. The matter was then called to the bench. Andrew Rupnarain is to return to court today where he will face threatening behaviour charges.
