Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Sev­en months af­ter flee­ing an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship, a woman and her 14-month-old ba­by were found in a house at Lo­ca­tion Road, Bar­rack­pore, yes­ter­day with their throats slit. 

The life­less bod­ies of 34-year-old Tara “Gee­ta” Ram­sa­roop and daugh­ter Ja­da Mooti­lal were dis­cov­ered at 11 am. 

A neigh­bour saw the ba­by ly­ing face down on a bloody mat­tress and called the po­lice, who al­so found the moth­er’s body when they ar­rived.

A 29-year-old close male rel­a­tive was tak­en in­to po­lice cus­tody hours af­ter their bod­ies were dis­cov­ered.

Wip­ing away tears at the crime scene yes­ter­day, Jas­so­dra Ra­jaram blamed the po­lice for not act­ing up­on nu­mer­ous do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports and pro­tec­tion or­ders that Ram­sa­roop, her younger sis­ter, had ob­tained against the sus­pect.

Ra­jaram said her sis­ter had dropped off her eight-year-old son at his school in Bar­rack­pore ear­li­er yes­ter­day, so when they found their bod­ies they put the school on alert in case the sus­pect went to that site.

Ra­jaram said the sus­pect was wait­ing for her sis­ter at the school, and she be­lieves he may have forced her back to his Bar­rack­pore house. She said her sis­ter had four chil­dren, two from a pre­vi­ous re­la­tion­ship.

Ra­jaram lament­ed that her sis­ter had been abused for about six years be­fore she de­cid­ed to end the re­la­tion­ship. Re­call­ing that day, Ra­jaram said her sis­ter called her and when she got there the sus­pect was beat­ing and drag­ging her sis­ter by her hair.

Ram­sa­roop start­ed work­ing with Ra­jaram at a burg­er cart and built a home at GP Road in Bar­rack­pore. Her two youngest chil­dren lived with her. 

How­ev­er, Ra­jaram said the sus­pect con­tin­ued “tor­tur­ing her.”

“He go­ing by her, beat­ing her. He gone with blades (cut­lass­es) a cou­ple of times...We work in the evening so when she goes home in the night...he wait­ing in bed for her,” she said.

Ra­jaram com­plained that her sis­ter made sev­er­al re­ports against him at the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion and ob­tained four pro­tec­tion or­ders. How­ev­er, she claimed the po­lice failed to serve them on the sus­pect.

“Up to last week he break in­to her house and steal 4,000 and some­thing dol­lars. She make a re­port again. They (po­lice) nev­er do noth­ing about it,” Ra­jaram claimed.

“He van­dalise my car, he van­dalise my sis­ter house. It have all them re­ports and they nev­er do noth­ing. The sta­tion nev­er do noth­ing.”

She said the po­lice would tell them that they could not lo­cate the sus­pect, and many times the po­lice re­fused to give her a re­ceipt af­ter she made the re­ports.

Ra­jaram lament­ed, “One day she called 999 and a woman po­lice of­fi­cer came and when she telling them about what hap­pened, the woman po­lice asked her ‘why you make chil­dren for he for’.”

Ra­jaram said the sus­pect had al­ways threat­ened to kill her sis­ter and her two chil­dren, but she (Ram­sa­roop) took his threats “for grant­ed.”

Ram­sa­roop’s neigh­bour, Amy Mo­hammed, who would care for her chil­dren when she was at work, ap­pealed to the au­thor­i­ties to take do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports se­ri­ous­ly.

“I want them to do some­thing about this and for the po­lice to give sup­port to women and chil­dren in these sit­u­a­tions. These men don’t care. They need to do some­thing about it,” she lament­ed.  

Hours af­ter the dis­cov­er­ies of the bod­ies, a rel­a­tive spot­ted the sus­pect in a forest­ed area at Pal­tinique Trace in Bar­rack­pore and called the po­lice. The sus­pect was al­leged­ly in pos­ses­sion of a rope.

Mean­while, the sus­pect’s rel­a­tive said she was sur­prised that Ram­sa­roop went to the sus­pect’s home yes­ter­day. She claimed the sus­pect called them and con­fessed that he had killed Ram­sa­roop and the ba­by. 

As tears streamed down her face, she said, “I would not like this to hap­pen to any­body.”  

She said af­ter the call, a rel­a­tive went in­to the house and dis­cov­ered them. She said they had spo­ken to him many times about his be­hav­iour and had in­ter­vened when they (Ram­sa­roop and the sus­pect) were fight­ing. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the fam­i­ly’s claims, Snr Supt Rod­hill Kir,k who re­cent­ly took charge of the South­ern Di­vi­sion, said he could not yet con­firm or de­ny Ra­jaram’s claims.

Ex­press­ing con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, Kirk con­firmed there were do­mes­tic prob­lems and a pro­tec­tion or­der was in place. How­ev­er, he said if there were breach­es of pro­tec­tion or­ders and re­ports are made, the po­lice need­ed to act.

He as­sured that un­der his stew­ard­ship, do­mes­tic and gen­der-based vi­o­lence mat­ters will be act­ed up­on. He said the po­lice and the pub­lic need to treat these in­ci­dents with the “ut­most lev­el of se­ri­ous­ness.”

Min­is­ter: A bar­bar­ic act

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, de­scribed the mur­ders of the moth­er and her ba­by as a “bar­bar­ic act of vi­o­lence.”

Strong­ly con­demn­ing the hor­rif­ic mur­ders in a state­ment, the min­is­ter said she was com­mit­ted to work­ing with stake­hold­ers to en­sure the care and well-be­ing of the sur­viv­ing child (Ram­sa­roop’s son), who was se­cured by mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, and to the pro­vi­sion of sup­port ser­vices to any af­fect­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers. 

She added, “I want to em­pha­sise that all acts of vi­o­lence against women and chil­dren are pre­ventable. It is our col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a so­ci­ety to en­sure that our fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties are places of safe­ty. We have the pow­er to pre­vent such tragedies.” 

As they raise aware­ness of the needs of the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety and im­ple­ment ef­fec­tive safe­guard­ing mech­a­nisms, the min­is­ter urged in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies to seek out these es­sen­tial ser­vices at the first sign of dis­tress. 

“Re­mem­ber, time is of the essence. PLEASE DO NOT WAIT; do not take any chances, as it may nev­er get bet­ter. Ear­ly re­port­ing is cru­cial in pre­vent­ing fur­ther harm.”

She told in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies and mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic that when faced with in­ci­dents of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence or any form of child abuse, all cas­es or sus­pect­ed cas­es should be re­port­ed to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the TTPS (999), the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Hot­line (996 or 800-2014) or Child­line 131 or 800-4321. She said help was al­so read­i­ly avail­able via the Na­tion­al Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Hot­line 800-SAVE (7283) or Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion  623-2608 (ext. 6701 to 6715). 

Not­ing that every life tak­en, every child emo­tion­al­ly or phys­i­cal­ly scarred is one too many, the min­is­ter said the di­vi­sion stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with every man, woman and child, and is ready to unite to end do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and child abuse.

IWRN urges pub­lic to reach out

Mean­while, the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work al­so con­demned the mur­ders. Not­ing re­ports that Ram­sa­roop had en­dured years of abuse, the or­gan­i­sa­tion again plead­ed with vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence to reach out to their team via our Face­book page.

IWRN pres­i­dent Adri­ana San­drine Rat­tan said,  “We have im­ple­ment­ed a new strat­e­gy for vic­tims which can­not be dis­closed. The first step is to re­port the in­ci­dents to the po­lice and en­sure to share all per­ti­nent de­tails in­clud­ing threats.”

She added that the on­ly way to nip do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in the bud is to pay close at­ten­tion to the abu­sive ten­den­cies, then con­tact them.