Fire of unknown origin destroyed a house at Haswell, Port Mourant around 9.45 pm on Wednesday leaving three persons homeless and its owner an arson suspect though his family is adamant he had nothing to do with it.
Owner of the house, Pandit Rohan Harrinarine, 50, was taken into custody at the Whim Police Station shortly after the fire following reports that alleged he was responsible for starting it.
His daughter, Shabana Ramoo, who lives in a house behind the destroyed one, told Stabroek News that her father was released on $20,000 bail yesterday afternoon and was told to return to the station at 10 am today.
She said that when the fire started her father, her mother Jasmattie Harrinarine and her 16-year-old sister Parbattie were visiting her.
Her brother-in-law saw the smoke coming from the three-bedroom wooden and concrete two-flat building and raised an alarm.
Her father, who was in the washroom, she said, ran out and he too started shouting “Fire! Fire!” and was assisted by other persons to form a bucket brigade.
However, their effort was no match was for the blaze which quickly engulfed the building. The fire tender was summoned but by the time it arrived almost one hour later the building was already destroyed. They, however, managed to prevent the blaze from spreading to nearby houses.
Ramoo said her mother, who was hysterical as she watched the house go up in flames, attempted to recover items from it but collapsed on the way and had to be rescued by neighbours.
Her sister, who is currently writing the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate examinations only managed to save her timetable which was in the “altar room at the side of the kitchen.”
Ramoo said she was not sure who reported that her father set the house on fire, but she denied that he had anything to do with it. She figured that if it was arson it could have been “a man in the area who he don’t get along with.”
She said her father, a pandit at the Albion Kali Temple, had travelled to Georgetown to perform a religious function on Tuesday. When he returned home after 9 am on Wednesday, she said, he dropped his bags and went over to her house in search of his wife and Parbattie.
Everything in the house was lost, she said, including her father’s bags that he had just returned home with, as well as items belonging to the temple that he was keeping, Parbattie’s books and school uniform.
Ramoo said her father had recently renovated the house and, “the fire left my parents left penniless…”