RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing her daugh­ter’s bru­talised body, which was found float­ing in the Guaya­mare Riv­er, Ca­roni, on Sun­day evening, San­dra Ba­boolal spent hours weep­ing at her En­ter­prise home on Mon­day.

“I can’t be­lieve they do that to my daugh­ter. No­body can be­lieve they do this to her. She was a nice girl. She did not de­serve this,” Ba­boolal told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view last night.

Ba­boolal said she was still try­ing to come to terms with her daugh­ter’s un­time­ly and bru­tal end.

“They rape her be­cause she had no clothes un­der­neath (when I saw her body). She was wear­ing a vest and brassiere. She had no tights, no panties and no slip­pers,” Ba­boolal cried in an­guish.

The dis­traught moth­er added, “Crime not nice. I nev­er ex­pect­ed this to hap­pen to my daugh­ter. Any­thing else but not this boy, this was bru­tal. I went and see her to­day. That was bru­tal. Women are not sup­posed to go so. My daugh­ter was a nice girl. She not sup­posed to die so.”

Ex­press­ing out­rage, Ba­boolal said, “Women make sons who be­come mon­sters like that. How could they do a woman like that? You don’t have sis­ters, a moth­er, cousins, no girl chil­dren? To do a woman some­thing like that?”

Ba­boolal al­so begged God for courage.

“The on­ly thing I could do is pray and beg for the help to fight this. I don’t know how far it will go but I fight­ing to cope. My child liv­ing sev­en years in Moru­ga and on­ly come up here with her fam­i­ly for her fa­ther 40 days,” Ba­boolal said.

She re­vealed that on the morn­ing Re­hana went miss­ing, they had shared cof­fee and a good laugh.

“Fri­day morn­ing she got up and we drink cof­fee to­geth­er, we laugh and talk. She said ‘mam­my, every­thing now start to look up for us’. I was do­ing some work for Christ­mas so I go to work in the morn­ing,” Ba­boolal said.

She re­vealed that see­ing her daugh­ter’s body was the worse ex­pe­ri­ence she has ever had.

Jag­ger­nauth, 32, had been liv­ing in Marac Vil­lage, Moru­ga for sev­en years with her hus­band Kevon Noel and their three chil­dren - Gabriel, 5, Uriel, aged three and Daniel, two.

They left Moru­ga and went to En­ter­prise in Ch­agua­nas to at­tend a 40-day memo­r­i­al for her de­ceased fa­ther.

Af­ter the prayers, they spent sev­er­al more days with Ba­boolal and Re­hana’s el­dest daugh­ter Emi­ly, 16, who has been liv­ing with Ba­boolal since birth.

Ba­boolal said Re­hana, whom she fond­ly called Re­na, left home to go to a near­by shop around 1.30 pm on Fri­day but she nev­er re­turned. A miss­ing per­son’s re­port was lat­er made at the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion.

On Sun­day evening, the fam­i­ly’s worse fears were re­alised when a group of fish­er­men found Re­hana’s body float­ing in the riv­er.

An au­top­sy will be per­formed this week.