Dear Editor,
We, the parents of Sheema Mangar, are thankful to be given this public opportunity to share with you our feelings, concerns and perspectives on the brutal slaying of our daughter on September 14, 2010, at the hands of a callous criminal – just for the sake of her cell phone. It is now January 2011, four months since her demise, yet there still isn’t any meaningful progress by the police in her case. We are still waiting anxiously for the result of tests done on the piece of fabric found underneath a suspect’s car that was purportedly sent to the Caribbean for DNA analysis. The police had promised that in this month the result would be made available. We are keeping our fingers crossed.
It is difficult to express how devastating this tragedy has been for us emotionally. The broader society can only empathise with us so much, but in an ultimate sense we are the ones who are left to deal with the brunt of the agony, an agony, that doesn’t seem to go away. As the old adage goes, only who feels it knows it. Additionally, the apparently slothful pace and casual manner of the police approach to the investigation does not help matters much. At first we were quite hopeful that the police would be able to produce quick results given some early ground covered (viz, the arrest of two suspects, the discovery of a piece of fabric underneath one suspect’s car, a strand of hair from another and the apparent compatible dents detected on one of the cars), but their subsequent inaction has only served to erode that hope and give rise to doubts and questions in our minds.
Below we elaborate on what we experienced when dealing with the police:
(a) After more than six weeks into the investigation our daily enquiries with the police were always met with the bland refrain, “investigations are continuing” and “we are working hard on the case.”
(b) More than six weeks after the tragedy we were told that the piece of fabric recovered from one suspect’s vehicle that may be critical to solving the case was still with the police and not dispatched in a timely manner overseas to facilitate its forensic testing.
(c) It was only after our scheduled meeting with the Commissioner of Police that we were told that the fabric was sent to Barbados. Before this we were told that it had been sent to Trinidad.
(d) The police keep asking for more samples of her working clothes even though one was sent to them earlier and was still lying at another station.
(e) The whereabouts of the clothing Sheema wore on that fateful day is still anybody’s guess – this uniform should have been the most appropriate attire for the purposes of the investigation.
(f) Questions remain about the hair sample; shouldn’t this also be sent overseas for analysis?
Clearly, the foregoing is quite revealing and lends to a sense of foreboding that this case may be destined for the cold case cabinet – a much dreaded scenario from our perspective. To the powers that be, please don’t let this become a reality. This is our prayer. Such is our hope.
Sheema did not deserve to die this way. She was a happy kid, quite cheerful and precocious with a strong motivation to achieve. These attributes made her a dashing success. At Queen’s College she was able to pass 10 subjects at the CXC examinations with 7 distinctions. And whilst employed at the Demerara Bank she zestfully pursued the ACCA certified accounting programme. At the time of her demise she was on the verge of completing her final programme with only one paper remaining. It was her dream to be a certified accountant as it was her dream to drive her first car – something that was already in the works and which was to be delivered on her 20th birthday just a few weeks away. But, as fate would have it, her dreams were not allowed to flourish; they were brutally crushed by a criminal who valued her cell phone more than her life, albeit a human life. Is this the sad state to which life in Guyana has descended? Then surely we are in quite a bad state and Sheema’s case, more than others, underlines this fact. Its key significance lies in the fact that it tends to highlight the seeming ineffectual nature of law enforcement in this country. Conventional wisdom dictates that if a criminal knows that his risk of being caught is quite slim then he would be emboldened to continue his diabolical ways. In Sheema’s case her assailant had the humane choice of returning to her what belonged to her, but ostensibly he made the morbid one, that is to run her over with his car because he knew he could do so with impunity.
Sheema’s soul cries out for justice and will not rest until it is achieved. Also, we as her parents will not give up. We have worked hard to raise her and give her an education. We would like to see justice served.
Yours faithfully,
Radica Thakoor and
L Mangar
