Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Sus­pects in the mur­ders of Ce­dros crick­eter Rashme Deoa­jit and fa­ther of two Ra­jku­mar Pope are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court to­day.

The Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions yes­ter­day gave in­struc­tions to charge both sus­pects.

Deoa­jit, 28, a sales mer­chan­dis­er, was found mur­dered at her home at Tatt Trace, Granville, on March 17. She was last seen ar­gu­ing with the sus­pect—whom rel­a­tives said she con­sid­ered a friend—around 8 pm the night be­fore. Ear­li­er, they had been lim­ing and drink­ing with her rel­a­tives.

Her fa­ther and broth­er, who live near­by, heard her phone ring­ing in­side the house the fol­low­ing day. Around 6.30 pm, her broth­er en­tered through a win­dow and dis­cov­ered her body on a bed. An au­top­sy re­vealed she had been beat­en to the head and stran­gled.

The sus­pect ini­tial­ly could not be found. How­ev­er, last Sat­ur­day, po­lice re­ceived in­for­ma­tion and went to a house in Cou­va, where he was ar­rest­ed.

In the sec­ond in­ci­dent, Pope, 45, a su­per­vi­sor with the En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, had picked up his daugh­ter, son, wife and sis­ter from a shop­ping mall on March 26. The fam­i­ly had been cel­e­brat­ing his daugh­ter’s com­ple­tion of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am.

On their way home to Friend­ship Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, they stopped at a mi­ni-mart to buy bread. When Pope en­tered the es­tab­lish­ment, CCTV footage re­port­ed­ly showed the sus­pect sud­den­ly at­tack­ing him, lead­ing to a scuf­fle.

The al­ter­ca­tion was even­tu­al­ly bro­ken up by the sus­pect’s fa­ther and Pope’s wife.

Pope’s con­di­tion wors­ened af­ter he re­turned home. He was tak­en by am­bu­lance to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he died. An au­top­sy found that death was due to heart com­pli­ca­tions and blunt force head in­juries.

The sus­pect, who lives in the same vil­lage as the Pope fam­i­ly, is al­so a rel­a­tive of 13-year-old school­girl Mari­ah Seenath, who was mur­dered last Sep­tem­ber.

Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau, Re­gion Three, are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.