One day after his trial commenced in the High Court in Berbice, Neezamudin Rafeek yesterday opted to plead guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter in the horrific killing of a Bushlot Village, West Coast Berbice couple in January 2016.
Rafeek also known as ‘Shazam’, appeared with his lawyer, Mursaline Bacchus, and pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Arthur Doodnauth Rajkumar and Diane Chamanlall between January 8, 2016 and January 9, 2016, in the course or furtherance of a burglary.
On Monday, Rafeek had pleaded not guilty and the trial commenced before Justice Sandil Kissoon.
Following the guilty plea yesterday, a probation report was ordered and Rafeek will return to the court on November 24, for sentencing.
On the morning of January 9, 2016, Rajkumar, 81, and Chamanlall, 45, were discovered with gaping wounds about their bodies in pools of blood at their Lot 93 ‘A’ Bushlot home.
They were taken to the Fort Wellington Hospital where Rajkumar was pronounced dead on arrival and Chamanlall succumbed while receiving medical attention.
The bandits had chopped the couple multiple times while demanding money but the elderly man and his wife did not hand over anything. A source had told Stabroek News that after the robbers demanded cash, they were told by the couple that they did not have any. One of the men then responded, “How y’all gon’ get shop and don’t have money?”
The men then continuously chopped the couple. As they packed items, the police arrived at the scene and the men scaled the fence and escaped.
Attorney at Law, Abigail Gibbs, in presenting the state’s case yesterday after the guilty plea, said that the victims were sleeping in their homes while Rafeek and others were smoking ganja in preparation to rob them.
She added that the accused invaded the couple’s home although it was secured and reinforced with iron bars.
She said that the couple awoke to the men in the house demanding gold and money but that the couple continuously indicated that they did not have any. As a result, the couple was chopped and beaten.
According to Gibbs, the accused in his statement related that they spent several hours ransacking the house. She noted that they even had time to pack groceries and drink beers.
After police arrived at the scene, the accused escaped but Rafeek’s hat fell and he later identified it as his. The clothing he wore that night was found soaking in water and tested positive for blood.
While listing the number of horrendous injuries both of the deceased sustained from the cutlass and knife, Gibbs said they both died from shock and haemorrhage and multiple incised wounds.
`Beastly Berbice butchers’
In December, 2020, Rooplall Abrahim, who admitted to fatally chopping the elderly businessman and his common-law wife was sentenced to life in prison, while his accomplice, Madanpaul Gocoul, was sentenced to 24 years for the crime.
Justice Brassington Reynolds handed down the sentences in Berbice after the two men, who had been charged with two counts of murder, pleaded guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter.
Both accused were represented by attorney Ravindra Mohabir.
Abrahim, the number one accused, was sentenced to life in prison, with him not being eligible for parole until completing 25 years in prison. The judge said that he started Gocoul’s sentence at 35 years but that five years were deducted for the guilty plea, five years for time spent awaiting trial and one year for remorse and good behaviour, which was noted in a probation report.
During the sentencing, Justice Reynolds had said that he was disgusted by the “saga of the beastly Berbice butchers.”
He called Abrahim a “serial offender”, while noting, that he saw no redeeming feature in anything that was told to him by counsel and the prosecutor except for the fact that he chose to plead guilty and not to waste the court’s time.
The judge added that it was mercy enough that the state was prepared to accept his offer of a plea to the lesser count of manslaughter. “We have heard of the anguish, and the grief and the continuing trauma being suffered by the relatives of the victims, the deceased persons, and that can never be lost on us,” he observed.
He had called the killings “heinous and gruesome” before delivering the sentence.
