-three men held
Hours after Omadevi Singh left a family gathering for a walk she was discovered dead in a Skeldon backdam canal. An autopsy has since revealed that she died from manual strangulation and three men have been arrested.
When her body was found at the Line Path location, a short distance from her home, at about 8 am on Sunday relatives were still baffled by Singh’s sudden decision to leave the ‘get-together’ the night before. The 34-year-old housewife, who lived with her reputed husband and five children, never told relatives where she was going.
Singh’s death, a senior police source told this newspaper via telephone last night, was treated with suspicion from the beginning. This, he said, is standard procedure. All deaths of this nature are treated as murder until a post-mortem examination is conducted to determine whether or not it is.
Among the three suspects who were taken into custody is Singh’s former boyfriend, the source said. Her husband, he further explained, had been detained by police to give a statement but was subsequently released.
The man, his sister told Stabroek News shortly before 10 last night, was again detained by police and remained in their custody up to press time. Sometime around 6pm yesterday police showed up at the Line Path wake house and took Singh’s husband back to the station.
“He is not one of de three men dem arrest,” the woman stressed, “and me don’t know why dem carry he to the station again…me na sure if dem going to loose he more late tonight [last night] or tomorrow morning [today].”
Police are still gathering details of what happened to the woman after she left her family gathering that night. It is unclear how long the suspects have been in police custody or whether, based on investigations, police will be able to institute charges against any of the men.
Meanwhile, Narainee Pokhai said that her daughter-in-law told relatives sometime after 7 pm on Saturday that she was “going on the road for a bit”. “She never tell nobody where she going,” the mother-in-law said. Relatives, Pokhai recalled, became worried after it got late and the woman didn’t return.
Singh’s body, Pokhai said, was discovered early Sunday morning by a group of passers-by. When she and other relatives heard that a body had been found in the trench, Pokhai said, they immediately rushed to the scene. A large crowd had already gathered by the time they arrived but relatives were eventually able to identify Singh.
Other relatives, when questioned, said Singh did not have a misunderstanding with anyone and they could think of no one who would want to harm the woman.
‘Me been at work when all this thing happen so me can’t really tell you what happen with she (Singh)…she was a alright girl. At least from how me know she, she and most people use to get along,” another relative told this newspaper.
Singh is the second Line Path woman to be murdered this year. On January 19 the body of a 43-year-old mother of three was discovered at her home in Line Path around 10 am. Nalini ‘Nalo’ Bhoge sustained chop and stab wounds to the back of the head and neck and her upper back.
Bhoge was reportedly at home alone at the time of the murder. A bloodstained cutlass and an ice pick, suspected to be the murder weapons, were recovered at the scene by police. Several suspects had been arrested following Bhoge’s death but they were all released. Police are still to find the woman’s murderer.
The Line Path women are among 17 who have been murdered so far this year.
