Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice, business-man Mohamed Haniff, who returned to Guyana seven days ago, yesterday succumbed to the injuries he sustained during a home invasion on Friday night and his wife has since been held by the police for ques-tioning about the attack.
Haniff, also known as ‘Raymond,’ 47, of Lot 56 Experiment, Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice, was reportedly beaten with an iron bar and chopped multiple times to his head with a cutlass.
He was rushed to the Fort Wellington Hospital, after which he was trans-ferred to the New Amsterdam Public Hospital, where he died around 1.30 am yesterday.
The Guyana Police Force, in a statement issued yesterday, confirm-ed that Haniff’s wife, who is 44, was arrested for questioning.
According to a police source, investigators from the Major Crimes Unit quickly noticed holes in the statement which she gave on the attack.
Haniff, who was working in St Martin with a relative, returned to Guyana just seven days prior. According to the source, the man returned with US$8,000, which he hid in a black purse under his bed after he previously noticed several men acting suspicious in front of his house.
The couple’s daughter, Bibi Zarifa Haniff, 25, who lives next door to her parents, said she heard noise coming from the house and then a noise on the dam.
However, she said it was not until later that she was informed that bandits had allegedly attacked her father. “My mother tell me how she did waiting for my brother to come from work so she didn’t bolt the door, she just push it in and they went upstairs when the three bandits come in,” she said. “She said how them had she flat on the floor with an iron and when she speaking the person telling her to shut up,” she added.
The woman told Sunday Stabroek that several days ago her parents noticed a couple of young men acting suspicious in front of their house. “Some guys went in front of we the day when them been blocking road… Them did checking up on them cars and my father and mother see it and they got scared and the same day he hide his money my mother didn’t know where he hide it,” she related.
The daughter said that as a result, when the alleged attackers demanded cash, her mother was unable to give them any since she had no idea where her father had hid the money that he returned to Guyana with. “Them asking but he didn’t tell them where he put it. He determined and he didn’t give them any-thing,” the daughter said her mother told her.
Investigators were told that after the perpetrators, who were said to have been armed with a small handgun, an iron bar and a cutlass, assaulted Mohamed Haniff in his bedroom, they left without any valuables. His wife did not sustain any injuries during the attack.
According to residents of the area, it was only after the now dead man’s 16-year-old son returned from work that he was rushed to the hospital.
Meanwhile, the daughter said, about two years ago her father operated a shop at their premises but then left the country to work and support their family.
She said he was planning to return in March but because of the restrictions on flights due to COVID-19, he was only able to return to Guyana a week ago.
Meanwhile, based on information gathered, after Haniff left the country his wife continued to operate their taxi business.
The daughter said that police yesterday took her mother and brother to the station.
Police sources yesterday said, that they have received information that the woman encountered some financial difficulties, causing her to supposedly pawn the couple’s house to someone in the community without her husband knowing in order to settle some of their debts.
However, when questioned about this yesterday, her daughter claimed she had no knowledge of any such development. She added that her father had always told them that their transport was destroyed in a fire many years ago and she noted that without the document her mother would have been unable to conduct any transaction related to the house.
