A mentally-challenged East Bank Berbice man who was tortured and abused by relatives when he could not perform household chores properly because of his condition, has found a new home.
Stabroek News caught up with Yoanichandra ‘Nadesh’ Bisram, 31, recently and he displayed marks about his body reportedly inflicted by a stepsister and her husband at Glasgow when he lived with them.
Speaking in a soft tone, Bisram whose right arm was bandaged after his stepsister pounded it on a table with a rolling pin, said that he was glad to leave the home because “me can’t bear it no more”.
But he did not move out on his own; he was actually thrown out on May 5. He recalled that the couple had gone out that morning and locked him out of the house.
Around 1 pm, he said, he got hungry and knowing there was food in the pot decided to jump through the window to get some. However his brother-in-law returned around the same time and “slap me up and tell me to get out”.
He ran out to a relative’s house in the village and in tears, hugged her and related what happened. The relative then contacted an uncle who is also from East Bank Berbice and he agreed to let him stay at his house.
The uncle then decided to take Bisram to the Central Police Station, New Amsterdam to report the abuse. The officers sent him to the hospital for treatment for the wounds and for a medical report.
The couple was arrested but denied abusing the man and claimed that he inflicted the wounds on his own with a shaving blade because he was “mad”. Bisram’s younger brother who had arrived in the country after reading a letter in the newspaper about the treatment meted out to his brother also asked for the charges to be dropped against the couple.
Bisram’s father migrated about 10 years ago and left him in the care of his stepmother. The abuse reportedly started about three years later when the woman left to join her husband, leaving Bisram with her daughter.
He continued living at the house owned by his father and stepmother and helped with whatever chores he could but “she beat me for any least thing”. He recalled that if the work was not done to her satisfaction the woman would pelt him with a piece of wood.
He showed this newspaper a mark on his upper right hand he recently got from the wood because he did not “wash the concrete clean.” Even though he was in pain he was afraid to tell her and had to continue the work.
At one time she burnt his tongue with hot oil using a pot spoon and when he screamed she “choke me neck and scrape me with she long nails”. She had also placed his hand on the table and pounded it both sides with a rolling pin.
If he took a long time to have a bath she would wait near the door until he got out and “bounce me head against the concrete wall outside the bathroom” until it started bleeding. The marks on his head were still evident.
Recently the woman left to go out but not before chaining one of Bisram’s legs to the bed. Unable to bear the torture after a while, he started “to holler”. Neighbours heard him and told him to come out of the house, not realizing that he was chained.
They told this newspaper that they would see marks on the man’s body and when they questioned him about them he would at first say that he fell and got injured. Eventually he would tell them the truth.
They said too that they have every reason to believe the man because they would “hear him screaming on top of his voice…”
The neighbours also said that they were disappointed that a probation officer who lives in the same street where the abuse took place did nothing to help the man’s situation.
Reports are that it was only after the man moved out that the officer took statements from him. The officer also reportedly said that he tried talking to the woman but she did not listen to him.
Stabroek News tried to obtain a comment from the stepsister during a visit to the area but learnt that she was away on a temporary job at the time.
