Police are awaiting legal advice on possible charges against the suspect in the murder of No. 48 Village, Corentyne housewife Hansranee ‘Sharda’ Sewdat, even as family members hold on to the hope that the killer is brought to justice.
Sewdat, 39, was found dead on Friday, October 14 with a long slash on the neck and stab wounds about her body.
Members of the woman’s family, who asked not to be named out of fear for their safety, told Stabroek News that she did not deserve such a brutal end and called on the police to leave no stone unturned with their investigations.
According to them, all fingers are pointing to her 75-year-old common-law husband, a large-scale rice farmer who constantly abused her. The man was arrested at the scene by investigators after he could not properly account for his whereabouts for approximately three hours. He was subsequently released on station bail.
Police sources said that the matter is still being investigated. They said the file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for the second time and charges would be determined upon its return.
The suspect had reported to police that he went to the backdam and when he returned he found the woman dead in the house.
Sewdat’s relatives said the man took the couple’s nine-year-old daughter with him to the backdam in Black Bush Polder that day. He then left her there with his workers and went out after saying he had gotten a phone call. Reports are that the man returned some three hours later.
The murder appeared to be well-planned, leading the woman’s relatives to believe that it was no robbery. “Which thief-man would go in your house and don’t thief anything?” they said, noting that the house was not ransacked.
Additionally, although results from the post-mortem examination proved that Sewdat died from shock and haemorrhage due to incised wounds to the neck, they pointed out that there was not a trace of blood in the house.
Persons told this newspaper that when the woman’s husband finally returned to the house, he went up the stairs alone and “he just pushed the door and look in the house and went down again.” They also said that he returned in the yard and kept “shouting for Sharda. He never do dat before…”
After that, their daughter went up the stairs and saw her mother lying on the floor in front of the door. She started screaming and held on to the body while her father came up and told her not to touch it. She had related that the body was already “stiff,” relatives said. The man then sent the child to call an “old man” from the village and he advised him to inform the police.
Residents later told relatives that they heard the woman “hollering in the house but thought it was one of the couple’s regular fights.
According to relatives, they are even more suspicious that the man had carried out the act because he did not even call to inform them about the murder. They are also disappointed that the man did not pay the funeral parlour to keep her body or help with other funeral expenses. “We are poor but we still do everything fuh she,” they said.
Further, they were disappointed that a pandit and his family – the suspect’s friends – in whose care the child was in after the murder, did not allow her attend her mother’s funeral.
Relatives said the man deprived Sewdat of money and she had to use money she had gotten from her father from the sale of a house. They said he also denied her basic necessities like water in the upper flat of their house. “She used to have to bring she wares (dishes) from upstairs to downstairs to wash. He din want she go anywhere and din even want she go by she own family,” they said.
Sewdat would tell them about the abuse and that she wanted to leave him. They had promised to help her to get out of the union and are hurt that they could not have rescued her before her death. “We din expect something like this to happen,” they said.
