The woman charged with manslaugh­ter in the death of her nine-month-old ba­by has been sent to the St Anns Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal to be eval­u­at­ed.

Shali­ni Ram­sa­roop, 30, al­so known as In­dra, was ar­rest­ed af­ter her ba­by was brought un­re­spon­sive to the Princes Town Health Fa­cil­i­ty on Sep­tem­ber 21.

Ba­by Salileen was then trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where she died. It is al­leged that Ram­sa­roop fed the ba­by an in­sec­ti­cide at the home of her (Ram­sa­roop) step­moth­er at Busy Cor­ner, New Grant.

Ram­sa­roop has three oth­er chil­dren. In­ves­ti­ga­tions were spear­head­ed by Supt Dhill­paul, su­per­vised by In­sp Jones and in­clud­ed Sgts Elvin and Forbes of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (HBI), Re­gion Three. An au­top­sy re­vealed that the ba­by's death was due to pul­monary ede­ma. A tox­i­col­o­gy test was al­so done.

Ram­sa­roop was sub­se­quent­ly charged by Sgt Ram­di­al fol­low­ing ad­vice from the Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions South George Bus­by. When she ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly in the Princes Town Mag­is­trates Court on Mon­day, she was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody for a fin­ger­print trace to be done to de­ter­mine if she had a crim­i­nal record. When the mat­ter was re­called yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Ram­sa­roop was ab­sent.

She was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Aaron Smith. The court was told that the trac­ing was not done be­cause she was be­ing held in quar­an­tine - which is the prison's COVID-19 pol­i­cy - at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, in Ari­ma. The mag­is­trate or­dered that Ram­sa­roop un­der­go a psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion at the St Anns Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal. The mat­ter was ad­journed to Oc­to­ber 19