The wife of a No 30 Village, West Coast Berbice butcher was terrorized and robbed of $1.2 M when two masked bandits invaded their home around 12.45 pm on Friday.
The bandits beat Meenika Saroopchand-Roopnarine, 43, about her body after she misled them about where the money was kept.
They also bound her hands and feet together “like a cow” to the bed with an extension cable and gagged her with duct tape.
The money was the proceeds of business they had transacted that day and it seemed as though the bandits “came directly for that.”
Meenika was wearing a pair of gold earrings and the bandits did not touch them. They also left behind some other pieces of gold jewellery she had in the room.
Her husband, Raymond Roopnarine, 47, was not at home at the time of the ordeal. When he arrived he heard a noise at the back of his yard, apparently made by the bandits as they were escaping through the back fence.
Thinking that it was from his horse he went to investigate and saw the back door open. He also found it strange that all the lights in the house had been turned off.
On checking the front door he found it too open. A faint sound coming from the back bedroom led him to his wife whom he immediately released. He alerted his brother who lives nearby and also informed the police.
Meenika said she heard loud banging on the front door. Realizing that it could not be her husband, she became scared and started to scream, but loud music blaring in the village drowned out her voice.
She then opened the back door to escape but a bandit grabbed her as she was running down the stairs and took her back in the house.
They asked her where the money was and at first she told them that she did not have any. But they pulled her hair and started to use expletives and she lied that it was in the front bedroom.
They ransacked the room and got angry after they did not find it and dealt her lashes until she told them that the cash was in the middle room.
The terrified woman said they then took her to the other vacant room and tied her in a sitting position to the one of the leg on the bed.
Her older sister, Indi told this newspaper, “Praise God my sister is alive. They can always work and make back the money.”
