Christine Persaud’s family is refusing to accept that she killed herself, saying that marks of violence found on her body after her death and her husband’s suicide days later told a different story.
A post-mortem examination performed on the remains of Persaud, 20, of Parika, East Bank Essequibo was unable to determine a cause of death and police have since taken tissue samples from her body for further testing. She reportedly ingested a poisonous substance on January 28 and died later at a city hospital.
“All I want to know is how she dead, so that I can get some closure,” her distraught father Andrew Persaud said recently, while noting that the doctor at the hospital where she died said that he found “nothing” when he flushed her stomach.
Two weeks after the woman’s death, Andrew is still emotional and he has more questions than answers and does not know who to turn to.
He last spoke to a senior police official at police headquarters, Eve Leary who directed him to the Parika Station. However while he was at the station, he was given very little information.
Stabroek News has been told that police are still awaiting the results of the post-mortem examination and are still conducting investigations into the woman’s death.
Efforts to contact relatives of Persaud’s husband, Alim Jahoor, were unsuccessful.
According to Andrew, about a year ago his daughter ran off with Jahoor, a 39-year-old butcher of Parika. He explained that he reported the matter to the police and was told that there was very little that could be done, because his daughter was an adult. The man said that he later found out where she was living and Jahoor’s mother assured that his daughter would be safe and well taken care of.
Andrew explained to this newspaper that as far as he knew, the two were married according to religious rites.
Marks
He recalled that on January 28, around 1:10pm, his daughter-in-law received a call from his daughter’s cellular phone. “Me daughter-in-law seh that all she hear was screams and they tried callin back de number but the phone ring out and that it was turn off,” he said, while adding that around 3am the following day Jahoor contacted them saying that the woman had died. He did not relate when or under what circumstances she died, but informed that her body was at the Woodlands Hospital. “Me wife and two sons went immediately with a friend. I didn’t go because I was too nervous to drive,” he recalled. However, when they arrived at the hospital, they found out that the husband had already moved the body to a funeral home. Andrew’s wife and other relatives went to the funeral home, where they were informed that the husband did not wait to see that the body was placed in the freezer. The following day, he said, the man was looking to bury the body and as a result he went to the police and reported concerns about his daughter’s death. He was then accompanied to the parlour by the police.
“On taking off her shirt there was plenty marks of violence like lashes,” the distraught man noted. He later showed this newspaper photographs which showed marks, some black and blue, on the woman’s body. In one of the photographs, a large mark on her back was evident. There was also a visible bruise there.
Andrew said that the police took pictures of the marks and wrote a report. Two days later, he said the post-mortem was done but it was inconclusive and a sample was taken from her body. “They say that they sending it to get tested but I never heard back anything,” he added.
Frustrated, he decided to visit the police force headquarters at Eve Leary and while there he was given a letter to take to the Leonora Police Station. As instructed, the letter was delivered and while in his presence, the police officers there contacted his daughter’s husband.
Andrew explained that the rank first spoke to the man, advising him to visit the station and then repeated himself to the man’s father. “Fifteen minutes later, a call came to the police station saying that the boy was dead. He hang he self right at Parika,” he said. At the house, Jahoor was found in front of the door with a piece of rope tied around his neck.
Victim
Andrew told Stabroek News that his daughter was a victim of domestic abuse. He said that in the year his daughter was living with her husband, she returned home countless times saying that she had been abused. “She would just come and say how he beat she up,” he said, adding that once the man made contact with her, she would soften up and return to him.
At the Parika Police Station, he said he was told that his daughter had made an assault report against a male in-law, he noted. Andrew, however, could not say what the outcome of that matter was.
His son-in-law’s mother, he said, claimed that his daughter attempted to commit suicide twice. “Dat strange cause we never get any news like that before,” he pointed out.
He added that the husband’s death minutes after he had spoken to police was strange and opined that this warrants an immediate police investigation. He said too what is even more strange is that the doctor found no poison in his daughter’s body but when he saw the body at the funeral parlour, he noticed rat poison smeared near her mouth and it was “smelling strong.”
“The bad thing is that I lose meh daughter and the good thing is that nobody else ain’t got to lose a daughta… but at the same time I need to know what happened because I need closure,” Andrew said.
He stressed that knowing how she died and the origin of the marks found on her body are the only things on his mind.
“I want the police to do a proper investigation and follow up on that police report made against the relative,” the man stressed.
Andrew said that he is going to make one final attempt to seek information from the police and thereafter he does not know what he will do. He remains hopeful though that one day all his questions will be answered.
Persaud is also survived by two siblings and her mother Indranie.
