Residents of Canal Number Two are in a state of shock after the body of a cattle farmer was found yesterday morning buried in a shallow grave.
The body of 67-year-old Sohan Ramdial, of Lot 69 Clay Brick Road, Canal Number Two, was found in the abandoned cane fields of the shuttered Wales Sugar Estate, some way off from where he kept his cows.
A search party was looking for Ramdial yesterday morning after he did not return home Sunday night.
Padmini Ramdial, the daughter of the deceased, said that her father left as per usual on Sunday morning to tend to his cattle but did not return in the night. “He go and come back every day and after he nah come home [Sunday night], mommy seh this morning that daddy nah come home, so we decide fuh search”, she recounted.
According to Padmini, on a daily basis her father would take his cattle to a section of the cane field, near where his body was found, about a mile outside of Belle West Housing Scheme. Once he got there, he would milk the cows before letting them loose to graze.
The man would return home at midday for lunch before venturing out again in the afternoon to bring his cows in. However, he did not return home for lunch on Sunday. The young woman said that the family wasn’t alarmed when he didn’t show up for lunch or by eight later that night as they believed he was off somewhere drinking. It wasn’t until yesterday morning, when her mother told the family that Ramdial did not return home, that they set out to look for him. He was found at 10.30 yesterday morning.
“When we come, we find the milk bucket there and the cow tie on the tree where he does milk it so we suspect that something wrong with he because he would never left the cow tie up there. We seh he old, you know, so we thought something must be wrong with he,” Padmini said.
The woman said that they assumed that one of his cows might have gone missing and maybe he went in search of it and had fallen somewhere, so they fanned out in search of him. It was a family friend, she said, who noticed freshly turned earth partially covered by some thorn bushes and pointed it out to them. This led to them digging where the man was discovered face down with a rope tied to his body.
Police are currently investigating Ramdial’s death.
Crime scene investigators were yesterday overheard saying to the man’s daughter that her father may have been abducted from the spot where he was milking the cow before being killed somewhere close to where he was found. It could not yet be ascertained when Ramdial was killed.
Ramdial had been caring for his cows, said to be some 22 head of cattle, with the help of his two sons for the last two years. He leaves to mourn his wife, daughter and two sons.
