(Trinidad Express) A woman described as the perfect mother and wife was strangled and her body dumped in a ravine several kilometres from her Waterloo home on Tuesday.
The body of Jassodra Baksh, 48, was found by crab catchers near the seafront at Orange Valley, Couva, around 3 p.m.
Her husband, Fareed Baksh, learnt of his wife’s death while filing a missing person’s report at Freeport Police Station that evening.
Her son Ronald Baksh said yesterday: “My father went to the police station that night to make a report because my mother didn’t come home. And that was when he was told that the description fit the woman who was found dead. He also had a picture of my mother with him.”
Father and son identified Baksh at the Forensic Science Centre in St James yesterday.
Baksh, a janitor at the Chaguanas branch of RBC Royal Bank, was last seen alive by neighbours on Tuesday, around 10.15 a.m.
Yasmin Mohammed-Sookhan, a neighbour who is also Baksh’s co-worker, said: “I saw her just after 10 a.m. and she said she was going to a bank in Couva to make a withdrawal. Then she was supposed to come back home and go to work for 3 p.m.
“I went to work and when she didn’t come in by 4 p.m. I started calling her, but there was no answer. I called my sister-in-law and told her to check next door and see if she okay. But then we heard she didn’t come home.”
The Express learned that Baksh did conduct a transaction at the Couva branch of Royal.
Police said Baksh’s body was found lying face down in a ravine along an abandoned canefield in Orange Valley, Couva, on Tuesday afternoon.
Investigators said three crab catchers were walking towards the sea when they saw two men pushing a white Nissan AD wagon, which was stuck in a ditch.
The men sought help from the crab catchers, who refused. They spotted Baksh’s body a short distance away and contacted the police.
A 26-year-old Carapichaima man was detained by police. The second suspect escaped.
Neighbours described Baksh as a “perfect woman” who cared deeply for her husband and two sons—Ronald, 19, and Remeez, 20.
“That was the perfect family. They went to church together and were really, really close. She was soft-spoken and kind and loved by everyone,” a neighbour said.
Ronald Baksh, a University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) student, said his mother was cooking a meal when he last saw her on Tuesday morning.
His brother is a student at The University of the West Indies (UWI).
“I ask her what she cooking and then I left for school. Her sister called about 1 p.m. to say she not answering her phone. That was when we started calling her and she didn’t answer. We became worried when she didn’t come home in the evening because she never left without telling someone where she was going.
“She never left us like that and we knew something was wrong. My mother was always there for us, she always pushed us to do our studies,” he said.
An autopsy performed by pathologist Dr Valery Alexandrov found that Baksh died from manual strangulation.
Alexandrov said there was no evidence that Baksh was sexually assaulted.
