A 37-year-old woman was yesterday badly tortured when two masked men and a woman barged into her Bush Lot, West Coast Berbice home around 9:45 am, one month after she suffered a similar attack.
Devika Prettipaul sustained cuts to her lower lip and ears with a pair of scissors. The assailants also used the scissors to cut off the balls of her feet and then showed them to her.
They wrapped her wounds with pieces of a skirt from the room that they ripped apart. Before that, they had also torn off the shirt she was wearing and stuffed it into her mouth. They later removed it.
Prettipaul asked them for water to drink and they took her to the kitchen and gave it to her. They then carried her back to the bedroom and placed her on the bed to lie down, she related.
The trio also elevated her feet on the bed-head before leaving. They also asked for her cellular phone but she told them she did not have any.
The woman was alone at home when the attack took place. It was not until her children returned home from work after 2 pm that she was taken to the Fort Wellington Hospital where she was treated and sent away.
At the time, she was upstairs cooking when she saw the three persons entering. She tried to scream for the neighbours at the back but the woman and one of the men grabbed her hair while the other closed the door.
They told her not to scream because they were “family.” They then threw her to the floor and started kicking her to the head, she said.
Her daughter, Jenita Budhoo, 17, came home from work and met a cousin who was under the house calling.
She also called for her mother and after she got no answer she went to call her brother, Bisham ‘Vinesh’ Budhoo, 16, who opened the door and made the discovery.
Budhu Bisham raised an alarm and the neighbours rushed over and took her to the hospital. The immediate neighbours had gone to the mandir while Prettipaul’s husband, Sohanlall Budhoo had also gone to work with a cash crop farmer in the village.
In last month’s attack, she was under her house around 9 am when three youths came and asked for a “help.” She left to go upstairs to get the money not realizing that they had followed her.
She was coming out of the bedroom when she saw the two older youths in the house. They held on to her and told her “don’t holler.”
After slicing off her ear lobes they pushed the pieces into her mouth, forcing her to swallow but she managed to spit them out.
They also dealt her two long cuts to the bottom of her feet, hoping to render her immobile. Though bleeding profusely from the wounds she managed to call out for help after they left.
She was wearing three pairs of gold earrings at that time but the youths only removed one and left it behind saying that they were not there to rob her. They had only carted off her cellular phone.
Two persons were arrested and she had identified them but they were released without being charged.
Prettipaul is insisting that she does not know the assailants and is clueless as to the reason for the attack.
