A vendor was yesterday remanded to prison after he was charged with the almost five-year-old murder of shop owner Bibi Sheniza Khan-Bhola.
Nathan Anthony Stoute stood before Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan who read the indictable charge to him at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court.
It is alleged that Stoute, between February 26, 2014 and February 27, 2014, at Rock Creek, Cuyuni River, murdered Khan-Bhola in the course or furtherance of a robbery.
Police prosecutor Gordon Mansfield told the court that the file in relation to the matter is incomplete, with two statements outstanding.
Subsequently, the 21-year-old vendor was remanded to prison and the matter adjourned until January 17 when it is expected to be heard at the Bartica Magistrate’s Court.
Khan-Bhola, a 34-year-old mother of two, was found stabbed to death in her shop at Rock Creek, Cuyuni River, in February 2014. On the day before she was found dead, she had a heated argument with two men over a pump she had given them for mining.
Afterward, police had issued a wanted bulletin for Stoute, of Helena No. 2 Mahaica, East Coast Demerara. He was one of two men who had been staying with the woman around the time she was killed and who police were treating as the prime suspects. The Force has never released the identity of the second man.
Khan-Bhola’s family believes that the two suspects hatched a plan to murder her because she wanted to take back the pump she had loaned them. They had said the two suspects were fired by their employer and had no job.
Khan-Bhola subsequently decided to loan a pump to them with the expectation that they would pay her for it. Things turned sour when the duo decided that they wanted to take the pump to another location even though they had given her no money.
The woman’s family had accused the police of doing a sloppy investigation.
