The Caribbean American Domestic Violence Awareness (CADVA) group is working towards creating a missing persons database.
CADVA is currently seeking sponsorship from among the diplomatic corps so that the database can be completed and launched by November, which will see the sixth anniversary of the disappearance of domestic violence victim Babita Sarjou.
This was announced yesterday by Director of CADVA Dianne Madray at a press conference at the Pegasus Hotel.
The then 28-year-old Sarjou left her Timehri home on the eve of Diwali, November 4, 2010, having informed her family that after work she was going to view the annual motorcade with her estranged husband and four-year-old son. She promised that she would have been back home at around 9 that night. Relatives never saw or heard from her again.
CADVA envisages that the database can be used to track and report on missing persons’ cases linked to a centralised system.
Sarjou’s mother, Champa Seenarine, along with a parent who is facing a similar experience were both present at the press conference.
Madray said since Sarjou’s disappearance, CADVA has been working closely with her family to advocate reopening the investigation. She noted that following a request Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Shalimar Ali-Hack in 2012 officially informed the organisation in writing that it was recommended to police that further investigations be undertaken to clarify certain issues, particularly as it relates to telephone calls made to and from the Sarjou’s cellular phones and the skeletal remains of a female dressed only in underwear that had washed up at the Weldaad foreshore in late August, 2011. Upon completion of all of the further investigations, the file should have been returned to DPP for further advice but it was never returned since the request in 2012.
When the skeletal remains were found, it was advised that a sample be taken from Seenarine to compare same with samples taken from the bone tissue of the remains. While the samples were taken, there have been no results to date.
Speaking to this newspaper yesterday, Seenarine said she is very disappointed about the way the police is dealing with the matter. “I need to get closure to this case and whether Babita is dead or not, I need to find her so I can get peace of mind,” she said. “I calling to each and every one out there, all those who might know something and have heart to come out and speak,” she pleaded. Sarjou’s estranged husband had faced intense scrutiny over the woman’s disappearance due to a history of domestic violence, which was reported several times between the Kitty Police Station and the Timehri Police Station.
The husband was charged with the offence of exposing pictures of Sarjou to the public with a view to corrupt public morals after photographs in which the woman appeared half-naked were displayed around her place of employment in 2010.
“The case has appeared to have gone cold or I would say freezing on a cold winter’s night,” Madray stated.
At the same time, CADVA is hoping to get a bill passed in memory of Babita Sarjou. The bill will be called “Babita Sarjou Missing Person’s Law.”
Madray said, “This is still a work in progress. We need to take a case like the Sarjou case and set precedence so that change can come and police officers who handle these cases place urgency and follow a protocol within a designated time frame, not six years later.”
Contacted for an update on the matter, Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum said he has requested the case file from the Brickdam Police Station.
