Neezamudin Rafeek was yesterday sentenced to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter for the killing of a Bushlot Village, West Coast Berbice couple in January 2016.
Rafeek is the third accused to have been sentenced this year for the murder of the couple which sent shock waves throughout Berbice at the time.
Earlier in the month, Rafeek, 25, of Bushlot Village, West Coast Berbice, had 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, one day after his trial commenced before Justice Sandil Kissoon.
After a probation report was read yesterday, Justice Kissoon sentenced the man, who is the third person to plead guilty to the brutal killing of the couple, to life in prison with the possibility of parole after completing 35 years.
According to the probation report presented before sentencing yesterday, Rafeek at the age of ten migrated to Trinidad and Tobago, but returned to Guyana after spending three years there, where he accompanied his father to sell doubles daily.
The report added that the accused refused to answer certain questions claiming that the prison system is responsible for his memory loss.
The report said that Rajkumar had made significant contributions to his community especially to the lives of youths whom he regularly taught welding, while Chamanlall was described as a quiet and good person.
The accused in court yesterday apologised repeatedly, claiming that he was threatened by his accomplices who told him that if he said a word to anyone he would meet a similar fate. He said that he was very sorry for the death of couple and claimed to have only dealt Rajkumar a lash to his foot.
Alleging that it was his accomplice who started to “chop up those people”, Rafeek said, “I am very sorry sir.”
Justice Kissoon before sentencing yesterday stated, “The words and terms brutal savagery, immeasurable cruelty, unspeakable agony, in the court’s mind best describe the gravity of the criminal acts of this accused, Mr. Neezamudin Rafeek and his accomplices…”
According to the judge, on the day in question, the accused and others embarked on a train of “criminal conduct of torture, butchery and savagery” to obtain gold and money after which they ended the lives of the couple and then proceeded to celebrate their crimes within the very premises they had robbed, plundered and killed, by imbibing alcohol until the sighting of law enforcement officers caused them to grow wings and flee.
He noted that the convict was seeking to invoke mercy and sympathy from the court. “I say without reservation on the factual circumstance of the matter before this court, had a jury returned a verdict of guilty against this accused in relation to the offence of murder the only just and appropriate sentence was to send you Sir to the gallows.”
The judge was of the view that Rafeek’s plea to the lesser count was not based on any sort of remorse but rather him trying to avoid the full consequences of his crime, “which you shall not Sir.”
Kissoon stressed that the maximum sentence prescribed by law for manslaughter is life imprisonment.
Noting mitigating factors on record, Justice Kissoon said that the accused was 19 years old at the time of the offence – a youth. Also, prior to the commission of the killings he was of good character and that his involvement may have been led and influenced by the main accused, Rooplall Abrahim, “or at whose behest you felt you were under a degree of compulsion to act.”
Justice Kissoon said that in addition to the number of years Rafeek has spent on remand, he also entered a plea of guilty shortly after the commencement of the trial.
He also informed that the aggravating factors were many, pointing out that there was a degree of planning and premeditation between the accused and his accomplices to rob the deceased. “In this regard you planned and you arranged with others. Set in train you discussed, you embarked and you carried out your plan. In the course of the planning and the execution of the plan you all armed yourselves with deadly weapons, you with a knife which it appears you took from your home pursuant to the arrangement and which you used to deadly effect in carrying out that plan helping to snuff out, inflict injuries and end the life of the deceased, which actions you attempt to transfer to another.”
Justice Kissoon also pointed out the injuries the deceased sustained as a result of the extreme violence meted out to them with weapons taken to the scene of the crime by the accused and others, as he also called them “butchers”, adding that he could not disagree with Justice Brassington Reynolds who sentenced the other two accused.
While listing the injuries Rajkumar sustained, Justice Kissoon said, that it was evident that “there was an attempt to separate the head and neck from the body.”
In issuing his sentence, Justice Kissoon stressed that the circumstances of the case demand that a sufficient sentence be imposed to punish the accused as well as to deter others from contemplating a similar course of action. “In those circumstances, for those reasons, you are sentenced to life imprisonment. It is the order of this court you should serve a minimum term of 35 years before you should be considered eligible for parole.”
Justice Kissoon clarified that the accused’s sentence will commence from his starting time in remand.
Additionally, the judge ordered that the accused benefit from programmes at the prison to aid in his rehabilitation “to obtain both a trade, a profession, and a calling to lend to your independence after your release, and to aid you to obtain the strength that is required in the future that you may not be inclined to similar courses of action.”
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’ Bush Lot 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?”
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 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, and will not be eligible for parole until after 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.
