-question of coast guard involvement in deaths still unanswered
A year after her husband and another man were found dead and her 10-year-old son went missing, Salimoon Rahaman has gotten no answers from police on whether a Coast Guard boat was involved in the Essequibo River boat collision.
On August 11 last year, 10-year-old Ricky Jainarine went missing following a boat collision in the Essequibo River. His father, Jainarine Dinanauth, 45, and a family friend, Henry Gibson, 45, died in the incident. That evening, the three were heading to Hog Island in the Essequibo River. The bodies of the two men were discovered in the shattered boat the next morning but there was no sign of Ricky.
The police were supposed to test paint samples taken from the vessel to determine whether a Coast Guard vessel, suspected by relatives to have played a part in the incident, was involved. To date that has not been completed.
Yesterday, Rahaman said she has not been contacted by police in a while. About two and a half months ago, she visited the Parika Police Station to see whether they would say anything. “They ain’t tell me nothing. They ain’t get any answers about the paint or nothing”, she said. Rahaman said that she can accept that Dinanauth is gone but not Ricky. “I feeling worse every day. To live without my son is very hard”, she said. “I believe he is alive and he is somewhere”.
Rahaman said that today – the anniversary of the incident, all she can do is pray. Frustrated that despite her protests and appeals, the authorities has not responded in any way, Rahaman said that she has even given up her farming.
Relatives believe that rogue coastguards were involved in the incident but it is not clear how it occurred. Rahaman had scoured the Essequibo in search of her son in the weeks following the incident but her searches failed to yield any sign of him. Relatives believe that a bag that washed up at Wakenaam shortly after the incident and then disappeared; had contained his remains.
Relatives surmise that the rogue coastguards had rammed the boat, robbed the men and killed them. An investigation by the Maritime Administration Department had found blue paint on the green coastguard vessel and there were green paint marks on the blue and white boat that the trio was in, suggesting that there had been a collision between the two. Persons had also reported that in the days following August 11, the coastguard boat was dry-docked for three days and there were reports that a section had been painted over. A Guyana Defence Force investigation was “inconclusive” but it did find that the Coastguard boat was on the river around the same time as the boat the trio was in. The blue paint samples from the Coastguard boat were handed over to the police for testing.
Up to now, there has been no word on the tests, Rahaman said. Suspicions that the Coastguard ranks were involved were heightened after three Coastguard ranks were charged with killing Bartica gold dealer, Dweive Kant Ramdass in the Essequibo River. Relatives have also pointed to the fact that the other boat involved in the incident did not contact the authorities following the incident. Suspicious too was the fact that items Dinanauth had on his person were missing though his licensed firearm was left in his pocket.
He had just returned from the interior, where he mined and reportedly had some raw gold on his person along with over $500,000 and a gold watch, all of which was missing when his body was found. He also had a bag that has not been found.
An autopsy showed that both men had died of asphyxiation due to drowning but that there was also blunt trauma to the head, chest and stomach. It was postulated that the men could have been beaten and their heads held under water. This also seemed likely as the bodies were found in the shattered boat and not in the water.
Every time that the Coast Guard ranks are taken to court, Rahaman or her relatives sit in to hear whether “they mention anything about Ricky or his father”, she said.