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Monday, July 7, 2025

17 years af­ter Dole Chadee's death...

Fear still lurks in Piparo

by

20160625

Even af­ter his death by hang­ing 17 years ago, fear still lurks with­in the rur­al vil­lage of Pi­paro and where no­to­ri­ous king­pin Dole Chadee once owned sev­er­al prop­er­ties and con­duct­ed many il­le­gal op­er­a­tions.

June 4 marked 17 years since Chadee, who was born Nankissoon Boodram, was hanged for the mur­der of the Ba­boolal fam­i­ly in Williamsville.

But even though he has been six feet un­der for al­most two decades in a prison ceme­tery, vil­lagers, young and old, were cau­tious about what they said about him.

Apart from their fear to speak freely, one com­mon sen­ti­ment was that the drug trade nev­er stopped. Vil­lagers said a gang of youths has been sell­ing il­le­gal rum, guns and drugs. None of those whom we spoke to want­ed their names pub­lished or their pho­tographs tak­en.

A sense of eeri­ness per­vad­ed the mid-morn­ing air through­out the vil­lage and hard­ly any­one was seen walk­ing the road when the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed on Fri­day.

At the start of Pas­cal Road is an aban­doned, ma­jes­tic-look­ing tem­ple with tow­er­ing walls. It looked dull, dirty and weath­ered. The mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar tem­ple was aban­doned af­ter Chadee was ar­rest­ed in 1994. He al­so had a house on the tem­ple's com­pound where he spent most of his nights. To­day, a near­by hard­ware rents the com­pound from one of Chadee's sons to store ma­te­r­i­al.

Chadee, who would have been 64 this year, was well known for his drug links in the un­der­world but was nev­er con­vict­ed for drug of­fences. In­stead, he and eight oth­er men in his gang were con­vict­ed for the 1994 mur­ders of Deo, Rook­min, Hamil­ton and Mon­i­ca Ba­boolal of Pooran Street, Williamsville.

Chadee was mar­ried to Ann Marie Boodram with whom he had two sons–Shi­va and Shar­ma–who live Pi­paro. Shi­va op­er­ates his fa­ther's farm rear­ing goat and sheep and was not at home or at the farm.

One vil­lager said Ann Marie died two years ago in Eng­land. Chadee al­so had two oth­er chil­dren with com­mon-law wife, Chan­dra, who all live abroad. Ru­mour is that Chadee al­so fa­thered chil­dren with a cousin and a maid.

Noth­ing changed...

it's a con­tin­u­a­tion

One man, who spoke for close to ten min­utes about life in the vil­lage 20 years ago said, "Please don't put my name be­cause they can come and burn down my house."

The el­der­ly man was pick­ing man­goes on Fri­day morn­ing. He said: "To be frank, noth­ing has changed with the drug busi­ness. "It is still go­ing on on a mod­er­ate scale. It's just a con­tin­u­a­tion from that time."

The el­der­ly res­i­dent added that while he nev­er had any in­ter­ac­tion with Chadee, his un­der­stand­ing was that peo­ple were not fear­ful not of him. He said Chadee used to talk to every­one and was "a good guy to every­one." A cou­ple who moved to Pi­paro about a year ago said they did not know much. The man and woman said there was talk about drugs be­ing sold by a group but they tried "not to deal up."

The man said, "A cou­ple of times there were some house rob­beries but we feel safe here."

More In­fo

?The Pi­paro Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre on Din­di­al Road was opened in 2001 af­ter the State seized the acres of land which Chadee had been squat­ting on for over ten years. He built two build­ings on the sprawl­ing piece of land.

One man said while it was nev­er a dwelling place for Chadee, "it was where the work used to take place."

He said: "You think here used to look this way years ago with road and lights? It was more qui­et and any­thing and every­thing used to hap­pen in­side there."

The State has since built dor­mi­to­ries, kitchens, a mul­ti-pur­pose area, and din­ing area for those who go there to be re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed from drugs or oth­er so­cial is­sues.


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