More than two months after his wife was shot and killed during a robbery outside their home, a city jeweller is upset that to date the police have not yet taken a statement from him.
Ashmini Doodnauth was shot by one of two armed men who robbed her and her husband outside their home late last November. She subsequently died.
A frustrated Tanieram Doodnauth told Stabroek News that just after his wife was shot, while he was at the hospital, policemen had asked him for bits of information such as his name and address.
He said that night a detective went to his home to take a statement but he told the policeman that he was unable to give a statement because of the condition he was in. The detective, he said, asked for the serial number of his gun, which had been stolen when the bandits shot his wife, Ashmini. He said he give it to the policeman, who told him he would return at 10 am the following day to take the statement.
“I told him that I would be home. He called me and told me that he couldn’t come anymore and would instead come at two o’clock… I told him no problem, I would be home,” Doodnauth said.
But the policeman never showed up, Doodnauth said, and no one ever contacted him after that.
He said yesterday that he was told that while his wife was hospitalised in the Intensive Care Unit, policemen had tried to get a statement from her but were prevented from doing so by the nurses.
Doodnauth said he could not understand why the police have not yet taken a statement from him. He said his wife’s murder was the only one at that time. “It was only one for the whole holiday. If they had ten what would have happened? I am not going to call them and beg them to take a statement. They are supposed to be doing their work.”
He said he knew there was nothing that could bring back his wife, but he just wanted the public to know that the police are not doing their job.
On November 28 around 3 pm the couple closed up the jewellery store that they operated in the Stabroek Market and took a taxi to their Lot 173 Pike Street, Kitty home. When the car stopped in front of the house two armed men approached and demanded a bag that they had with them. The bag contained Doodnauth’s licensed firearm and some fruits.
The men shot 56-year-old Ashmini once in the neck, ordered the driver out of the car and drove off. A passing vehicle stopped and rushed the injured woman to the hospital where she was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. She died several days later. The car was found abandoned in an ‘A’ Field, Sophia street several hours later.
