Minutes after the man who raped and strangled her 16-year-old daughter was sentenced to hang yesterday, Surujdaye Lakhan appealed for the resumption of the death penalty.She said so outside the San Fernando First Assizes Court where Paul Vincent earlier was found guilty of murdering Radha Pixie Lakhan and her aunt, Taramatee Toolsie, weeks apart in 2005.
On his arrest then, Vincent, 33, confessed to raping Radha six times before strangling her with her school belt. He also said he raped Toolsie before he strangled her with her bag strap.When the jury returned with the guilty verdicts after three hours of deliberation yesterday, there were collective gasps from relatives in the courtroom, who began to cry.
Vincent, the father of one, showed no reaction to the verdicts. Asked by Justice Mark Mohammed if he had anything to say before he read the two death sentences to him, Vincent calmly said: "No."Lakhan, who was with her two other children, Matie, 33, and Sumatie, 30, said she felt happy justice was served but said she wanted to see convicted murderers hanged.She said: "I think we should have something like in Iraq, where when you steal, they cut off your hand.
"They should have something like that here. It have too much murders and unnecessary killing. I think they should bring back something like that, the hanging. It will not solve the problem but maybe it will ease it."Saying she had spent the last eight years praying for the outcome, Lakhan said her husband Rampersad died two years after Radha, their youngest child, adding her death was too much for him to bear."He took it on so much," she added.
Rampersad had identified Radha's schoolbag and uniform after her remains were found a month after she went missing.Agreeing with Lakhan that hangings should resume, Toolsie's son, Ramdeen Beepath, 33, said: "They sit down in jail and taxpayers just minding them. This man take happiness away from me."With tears rolling down his face, Beepath said his mother was murdered a month before the birth of her first grandchild."The verdict," he said, "does not take away the pain.
"It's hard. My mother, she was a single parent, she was my mother and my father. We were real close. They say time heals, but I don't know. It is still raw inside."State attorneys Tricia Hudlin-Cooper and Renuka Rambajhan, from May, led a mountain of evidence against Vincent. Apart from the confession taken by Sgt Sean Dhillpaul and Cpl Kirk Griffith, the State also offered circumstantial evidence.
There were over 40 witnesses, including police complainants Sgt Inniss Minors, Insp Michael Wells and Vincent's common-law wife Leslie Ann-Bourne, his mother Gene Campbell and other relatives.Vincent did not give evidence but called one witness.His defence, led through attorney Rekha Ramjit, instructed by Michael Rooplal, was that he was framed by the police who concocted and fabricated the statements.
Thanking the jury for its service yesterday, the judge noted the trial was one of the heaviest and most demanding in several years.In a brief interview afterwards, Vincent's mother, Gene, said: "I leave it in the hands of God."She said she had spoken to Vincent who was solemn.
The murders
Radha, a student of Palo Seco Government never made it home after school on March 22, 2005.Toolsie left her La Brea Trace, Siparia, home for work on April 15, 2005. Vincent confessed to attacking and dragging her into the bush. Her decomposing body was found three days later.Vincent, who lived on the same street, was arrested the next day.He later confessed to killing Lakhan and on April 22, 2005 took police to a bamboo patch near her Spring Trace home where they found her skeletal remains.
