Relatives of Asif Rahim Khatoon, the Meten-Meer-Zorg, West Coast Demerara fisherman who was allegedly fatally beaten in police custody are finding it hard to cope with his death and are “looking for answers.”
His wife, Soorsattie ‘Lilly’ Chandrapaul, 35, is disappointed at the snail’s pace at which the investigation is going and feels justice is being denied.
Khatoon who was arrested around 11 pm on November 21 during a domestic dispute with Chandrapaul had told her that the police had beaten him severely.
As a result, he suffered a fractured skull, broken jaw and injuries to his stomach. His face was also swollen and he was “vomiting blood,” according to Chandrapaul.
She said all of that could have been avoided and her husband would have still been alive had the police not treated him in such a brutal manner.
“He had no problem with the police and I don’t know why the police brutalized him like that
He lost his life for no reason. This cannot be fair!” the distraught woman cried.
“He was a very hardworking fisherman and was earning for his family. Now it is so hard for us to get by. We are facing a really difficulty time. My husband left a house, yes but we can’t eat this house.”
She told this newspaper too, “We have to survive, I have to send these children to school and I have to find food and clothes for them. How can I make it? We’re trying to make much with the little we have.”
The woman tries to be independent and is “running a little shop” but because of her location business is poor. She also rears some chicken but said everyone is doing the same so there are more sellers than buyers.
Sometimes, she said, she feels like giving up because “this is a sad situation we are facing.” She is aware though, that she has to be “strong for my [four] children.”
File
Chandrapaul told Stabroek News that she had received a call late last month from a senior police officer who told her that the file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for advice and she felt relieved.
She was waiting patiently to hear the decision of the DPP but then was saddened when she recently received information that the file had not reached the DPP.
“I can’t say what happen there because I have been waiting so long for an answer and two months would soon finish and nothing is happening.”
His daughters, Shaneeza, 19, and Narifa, 17, told this newspaper that they really miss their father who ensured that they had everything that they needed.
They were “looking forward to seeing him around but now we are looking forward for justice for him.”
According to them, “We want to know where the file is. They need to tell us the truth because it looks like the file disappeared. We understand that the file has to go through a process but it is taking too long.”
Chandarpaul lamented, “If a general investigation is carried out I may get a proper answer… if not I would never know the truth about what happened to my husband.”
The police arrived at the couple’s home after receiving the call and took Khatoon into custody. He was released on November 24 without being charged.
Police had claimed that another prisoner had beaten him while in custody but the woman insisted that, “No prisoner could beat him with his bare hands like that and break his jaw, damage his stomach and fracture his skull and kill him.”
She also said that “all his teeth [were] rocking in his mouth. Those are serious injuries and it is impossible for any prisoner to do that…”
Further, she said, “If he had committed a crime I would have accepted but he did not deserve such treatment. If they can do that to him what can they do to others?”
She was “praying every day with my four kids for justice for my husband. We are left to suffer and it’s only who feels it knows it. I now know when somebody lose someone they really love how they feel.”
She believes that no action is being taken because her husband is an “ordinary fisherman” and said if it was her husband who had done something to the police he would have already been charged and placed behind bars.
Arrest
Chandrapaul had said that when the police arrived after receiving the call, Khatoon “did not resist arrest; he co-operated with them” and was placed in handcuffs.
She accompanied him to the station in the police pick-up and sat in the cabin while he was placed to lie flat at the back with a few officers.
On the way, they stopped to pick up two young men and her husband tried to get up to see them and one of the officers then reportedly gun-butted his face.
He was also shouting and telling her that the police were “beating him” but when she looked back she did not see anything. When they arrived at the station, he tried to help himself in getting out of the van when a policeman hit him to his face with his knee.
He was kept at the station for the night and was taken to the Parika station the following afternoon.
Around 5 pm on Sunday, he called and told her that the police had beaten him and broken his jaw.
She went there about two hours later and asked to see him but the [female] officer said she could not “take him out.” She insisted that she wanted to “see his face” and the man was allowed to look out.
Chandrapaul said she noticed that it was swollen and she told the policewoman to “give him two panadols” but she allegedly refused. “She tell me ‘madam you have to go now’.”
She then decided to make a report to a senior rank at the Leonora station the Monday morning and he arranged for a medical to be uplifted.
They went to the Leonora Cottage Hospital and the doctor sent them to the West Demerara Regional Hospital for an x-ray which proved that his jaw was broken.
He was also taken to the emergency unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) where two other x-rays for his stomach and jaw were done.
All this time her husband was in a lot of pain and discomfort. And as if her troubles were not enough, when she asked the doctor to let him lie on the bed and probably give him treatment/saline, he refused.
The doctor sent him instead to the dental clinic but it was already late and she took him the following morning.
There the “specialist checked him and asked why the doctor sent him there.” He referred him back to the GPH where he was admitted in the surgical ward.
But he was still bawling in pain and when she asked the nurses to “give him something for the pain they tell me that they can’t work with me orders, they have to work with the doctors’ orders.
The following morning, on November 27 he was discharged from hospital and he died around 1 pm the same day at his home.
