Trinidad: Stalker who murdered wife should have been arrested earlier – women’s group

(Trinidad Guardian) The In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IR­WN) says that if re­ports of ha­rass­ment were made against Roger Singh, he should have been ar­rest­ed be­fore he was able to mur­der his es­tranged wife, Naiee Singh on Mon­day.
Naiee, 31, an ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cer at Ven­ture Cred­it Union, Cou­va was shot twice by Singh, 33, out­side her work­place along Noel Street.

Singh, a for­mer in­struc­tor at the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre, then shot him­self dead.
IR­WN pres­i­dent San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan told Guardian Me­dia that Naiee’s mur­der was be­yond un­for­tu­nate.

Isaac-Rat­tan said the IWRN was not cast­ing as­per­sions, but based on re­ports, cou­pled with their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Singh’s pri­or ac­tions war­rant­ed his ar­rest. 
“Based on re­ports, he had been stalk­ing her for months and al­so ver­bal­ly abus­ing her and mem­bers of her fam­i­ly.

Such ac­tions by an in­di­vid­ual who seemed to be men­tal­ly de­ranged and ob­sessed were enough for him to be ar­rest­ed and charged,” Isaac Rat­tan said.
The IWRN is urg­ing vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and their fam­i­lies who suf­fer ver­bal and phys­i­cal abuse to call the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit at 999 and de­mand ac­tion.
“Don’t be afraid to be frank in dis­clos­ing de­tails of the sit­u­a­tion as we can’t af­ford to have an­oth­er fa­tal­i­ty through do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.”

Al­though Naiee’s friend told re­porters that she had a pro­tec­tion or­der against Singh, Isaac-Rat­tan said those or­ders in their cur­rent for­mat can­not and would not work. On June 21, 2018, the IWRN sub­mit­ted rec­om­men­da­tions to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, but it Isaac-Rat­tan said they seemed to have fall­en on deaf ears.

Among the pro­pos­als were an in­crease in penal­ties for breach­es from $9000 to $50,000 and im­pris­on­ment from three months to three years for a first con­vic­tion. 
Al-Rawi said Naiee’s mur­der was a trag­ic sit­u­a­tion and while she had a pro­tec­tion or­der against Singh that was known by the po­lice, fam­i­ly and friends, mur­der­ous in­tent was dif­fi­cult to man­age.

He said his of­fice was near­ing the com­ple­tion of draft amend­ments that will bol­ster the ef­fec­tive­ness of pro­tec­tion or­ders.

These in­clude changes to sev­er­al Acts of Par­lia­ment, that will see stiffer penal­ties for those break­ing pro­tec­tion or­ders, new poli­cies on how po­lice re­spond to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports and elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing.

He said those in­volved are hap­py with the pro­posed changes as they in­clude the work of sev­er­al stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the IWRN.

The pro­pos­als are ex­pect­ed to be of­fered for pub­lic scruti­ny soon.
Al-Rawi said his­to­ry was cre­at­ed on Mon­day when T&T had its fastest tri­al; 15 min­utes be­cause of leg­isla­tive amend­ments that al­low for judge-alone tri­al.

These leg­isla­tive changes al­so gave judges the pow­er of a mag­is­trate to hear do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mat­ters. And with an in­crease in courts ex­pect­ed in the next eight weeks, he said mat­ters will be able to be heard soon­er.