A farmer was yesterday found buried in a shallow grave in a yard four corners from his Enmore, East Coast Demerara home with suspected stab wounds and the prime suspect was yesterday held, along with a female accomplice.
Dead is Gangaram ‘Bumpy’ Bharrat, 51, of Lot 399 10th Street, Foulis Enmore, East Coast Demerara. Four neighbours were also held yesterday and were assisting with investigations.
When Stabroek News visited the man’s home last evening, his tenant of four months, Amrita Narain, said that he lived alone in the upper flat and she had last seen him on Friday around 5 pm.
According to her, he had indicated that he was going to his friend’s home at 14th Street to have a drink. But he never returned home.
“He left on Friday afternoon and never come back. Sunday, we start to investigate and people say he mussee gone by he family but then the man who he been drinking with come and ask if he never come home and we say no,” the woman said.
She added that the man who had come to inquire if he had returned home is known as Rakesh and is said to be a neighbour of the suspect. Police officials identified the prime suspect as Joel, a 23-year-old man.
Police Public Relations Officer, Ivelaw Whittaker, confirmed that Joel and a woman were arrested but was unable to provide any further details.
At the scene last evening, this newspaper spoke to the dead man’s niece, Devika Persaud, who said that neighbours, after suspecting that something was amiss, contacted them the day after he did not return home. On Sunday, she said, relatives lodged a missing person’s report at the Enmore Police Station, in hope of hearing something about the man’s whereabouts.
“Yesterday (Monday) we come here (Joel’s home) and de place lock up, just two dogs went in the yard and here was the last place he went on Friday night. All the people move away,” she said.
After still not hearing from him over the weekend, the man’s sister and another relative yesterday decided to revisit the Police Station and request that police officers accompany them on a visit to the couple’s home where he was last seen.
When they arrived at the 14th Street house, they saw a vehicle belonging to the duo parked in the yard in which Bharrat’s cap lay.
This, she said, added to their suspicion that there was foul play in her uncle’s disappearance.
According to Persaud, her aunt observed that the yard was washed clean and they decided to search further. While in the back yard, she said, they noticed that some of the soil was disturbed and they decided to dig and this led them to the discovery of Bharrat’s body.
“They come and they went searching. They dig up and find him. He head deh down and he foot up and they seeing he guts and suh.
They say he foot got chop and suh on it,” Persaud relayed.
Bharrat’s family believes that robbery was the motive of the perpetrator, since he had a large sum of cash on him at the time of his disappearance.
“He had nuff money on he because it was his birthday on the 25th of June and his daughter send money for he and on Friday he went and sell he greens, so he had that money too,” Persaud told this newspaper, adding that her uncle would usually carry out his business on the Enmore Dam.
In addition to this, she noted that only recently Bharrat had confided in his sister that he was being threatened to remove from the farmland on which he was planting his crops. The owner, she said, had been demanding to use the entire property.
When asked if the owner was linked to the main suspect in any way, Persaud said she was uncertain.
Bharrat was a father of two.
