(Trinidad Guardian) Today, little Roshan Wendell Ramrattan should have been cutting a cake to celebrate his second birthday. Instead, a pathologist will be cutting the little boy’s body to perform an autopsy to determine the cause of death. Ramrattan was pronounced dead on Saturday evening while receiving treatment at the San Fernando General Hospital. He was being treated for injuries he sustained while at his School Trace, Gasparillo, home.
Police believe Ramrattan, affectionately called Pachiko and Kishan by relatives, was beaten to death by a 19-year-old female relative. She has since been detained by police along with a 38-year-old male relative. They remained in custody up to late last evening.
Relatives claimed the police failed to help the child. They said on Friday evening they called the police to report that the woman was beating the child and when the officers came at 7.30 pm, they looked at the child and then left him in the woman’s care. When the T&T Guardian visited the family home yesterday, relatives and neighbours gathered together to console each other and make sense of the child’s death.
Ramrattan’s uncle, Shaffie Ramtoola, said they called the police, who just came, looked at the child and left. He said they did not take a statement. His sister, Hazina Mohammed, who lives next door to the one-room galvanise shack that Ramrattan was living in, said the police could have helped the child. “They take the child and take off his she said. “They did not even clothes to see the bruises in the dark,” come under my shed in the light…How they could see anything?”
She said the woman and the man were planning a birthday party for Ramrattan today and had bought a birthday cake to celebrate. Ramtoola explained that on Friday afternoon he saw bruises on the child and asked the woman if she was beating him. He said the male relative, who works with a contractor doing roadworks, was not at home at the time and he believes the woman was venting her rage on the child because she could not reach him on the cellphone.
“Every fortnight when (the female relative) get pay she does call him and like when she doh get through, she does take out the frustration on the child,” he said. “Every fortnight she does turn beast…She does turn rowdy on weekends.” Mohammed said Ramrattan was a “nice child.” She said the woman dropped out of school and began living with the 38-year-old man three years ago. Ramtoola said the man treated the woman and the child “good.”
Mohammed said the family did not know the woman had taken the child to the hospital on Saturday until a friend came and told them that she saw the woman with the child in the hospital. She said the woman left home around 8.30 am Saturday without saying where she was going.
Ramtoola said around 10.30 pm on Saturday, the woman came home with a group of men, packed some items in a bag and left. Mohammed said she was shocked when police came to their home yesterday morning around 2.30 looking for the woman, after they said she ran away from the hospital when the child died. Investigations are continuing.
