KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

De­spite leav­ing a mis­er­able mar­riage, be­com­ing an on­line ghost and fil­ing for a pro­tec­tion or­der, Naiee Singh be­came an­oth­er vic­tim of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence when she was shot dead by her es­tranged hus­band, who then took his own life.

It was a hor­ror sto­ry that came to life for rel­a­tives who came to Ven­ture Cred­it Union in Cou­va where Naiee worked, to see her body ly­ing on the ground.

Mere inch­es away, her hus­band Roger Singh, a for­mer NESC in­struc­tor, laid dead.

Ac­cord­ing to a friend, Singh, 33, stalked and ter­rorised Naiee, 31, for months af­ter she left their home in Bal­main, Cou­va about a year ago. Afraid, she changed her mo­bile num­ber and delet­ed all so­cial me­dia ac­counts. She was stay­ing with her par­ents in Es­per­ance.

Wit­ness­es said Singh parked his black Mit­subishi Sportero at a mall carpark along Noel Street, oblique­ly op­po­site the cred­it union.

He pur­chased a news­pa­per from a near­by shop and know­ing that Naiee would usu­al­ly park at the Ram­s­ingh build­ing on her way to work, he wait­ed across the street at the Cou­va Metro Ho­tel. 

Po­lice said it was 7.58 am when Ram­s­ingh parked her car and was about to walk to work when Singh ap­proached. Af­ter a short strug­gle, he end­ed her life with two gun­shots. She fell to the ground and he shot him­self.

Naiee’s rel­a­tives went to the scene but de­clined to com­ment. Her broth­er was heard lament­ing how his sis­ter was “gunned down on the street like a dog.”

He was al­so shocked at how easy it was for Singh, whom he de­scribed “nor­mal”, to get a gun.

Christa Pre­vatt, a friend, said that while she got no com­plaint of phys­i­cal vi­o­lence, Naiee suf­fered years of emo­tion­al abuse. Pre­vatt said Naiee was con­stant­ly den­i­grat­ed for who she was and de­cid­ed to take the brave step of leav­ing her decade-old re­la­tion­ship. De­spite hav­ing the sup­port of her fam­i­ly, friends and col­leagues, Pre­vatt said Naiee was con­stant­ly tor­ment­ed by Singh. And when he thought he was not get­ting to her, he would at­tack her fam­i­ly, say­ing vile things to her moth­er. 

“The tor­ment got so much so that Naiee had to ex­clude ac­tiv­i­ties like ex­er­cis­es from her life. He was bad­ger­ing her on so­cial me­dia and the phone. She had to change her num­ber. She got the re­strain­ing or­der. I want the lead­ers to un­der­stand that we do not need a re­strain­ing or­der. We need peo­ple who dis­play these types of men­tal ill­ness to be re­strained. We re­alise they are not good to them­selves and even worse to the peo­ple who are close to them be­cause fam­i­lies are torn apart. For all the women and men out there who are hurt­ing from some kind of sep­a­ra­tion, seek help. This is not an end­point. Life goes on even if some­one tries to move away from you,” Pre­vatt said.

CEO of Ven­ture Cred­it Union, Ramesh Lutch­man said staff and man­age­ment were trau­ma­tised by the mur­der.

As such, the branch was closed for the day and coun­selling was be­ing or­gan­ised.

“We are in sup­port of each oth­er and we are very shocked. She worked in the loans de­part­ment as an ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cer. Some of them (em­ploy­ees) were close to where it hap­pened. They too had just come out of their ve­hi­cles and were head­ing to work. She was love­ly and she had the love of all the staff. She was a hard-work­ing, ded­i­cat­ed and loy­al staff who we will miss tremen­dous­ly,” Lutch­man said.

As un­der­tak­ers left with the bod­ies, Naiee’s col­leagues lined the road singing the hymn, “What a Friend We Have In Je­sus”.