Two years after her son, Ricky Jainarine went missing following a boat collision in the Essequibo River, Salimoon Rahaman is desperate for answers and continues to cling to hope that he might be alive
“I still feel that he’s alive and he’s somewhere,” she said. Rahaman said that she wishes the authorities would take an interest and continue to investigate. It has been a long time now since she has heard anything from the police, she said.
The last time Rahaman saw her youngest child, he was leaving their Hog Island, Essequibo River home with a neighbour to collect his father, Jainarine Dinanauth, at Parika. It was late afternoon on August 11, 2009 and in their tiny speed-boat, Ricky, 10, and the neighbour, Henry Gibson, picked up Dinanauth and headed home. The next morning the bodies of Dinanauth and Gibson were discovered in the shattered boat. There was no sign of Ricky. Rahaman scoured the Essequibo in search of her son in the weeks following the incident but her searches failed to yield any sign of him. Police arrested no one but there were suspicions that rogue coastguards were involved.
Yesterday, Rahaman said that it is hard for her not knowing what happened to her son. She has since moved out of Hog Island to Caria Caria to be with her sisters. “I’m not planting farm anymore,” she said. This was difficult since after the incident, she was living alone on Hog Island. To earn a living now, she operates a small shop but says that sales are limited in that area.
Rahaman said that despite tests on paint samples on the coast guard boat finding that the samples did not match the boat that her husband was in, she still has her suspicions about the coast guards, who have since been arraigned in court on several charges, including murder, in another matter. She said that she wishes that the authorities continue to investigate the matter.
Relatives had surmised that the rogue coastguards had rammed the boat, robbed the men and killed them. A Guyana Defence Force investigation was “inconclusive” but it also found 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 but police said that the paint samples did not match.
