Non Pariel man dies after home, business gutted in fire

Hanuman Singh
Hanuman Singh

Hanuman Singh, the Non Pariel, East Coast Demerara businessman who suffered a heart attack on Friday night after learning his property was on fire,  succumbed yesterday at the Georgetown Public Hospital.

Singh, 57, also known as ‘Latchie’ and ‘Birdman,’ was on a life-support machine after he was found in front of the Guyana National Zoo on Saturday morning.

One of his daughters, Reshma Nehaul last night related to Stabroek News that her father passed away yesterday afternoon. She explained that at the time, doctors had taken him off from the life-support machine and were preparing to transfer him to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

However, they were unable to do so as he succumbed moments later.

“Doctors told us that his heart failed him and they didn’t get to move him to the ICU…” she said last night in a telephone interview.

“Yesterday he was responding a bit… he hold on to our hands …but he died after they were trying to transfer him to the ICU,” the daughter explained.

On Friday night at around 9, Singh’s two-storey Lot 360 Block 12, Non Pariel property, which housed a supermarket, ice-cream parlour and a newly-constructed bar in the lower flat, was gutted within a matter of minutes.

Singh, his wife Lalita, their daughters Ashanee Singh, and Nehaul’s son, all lived at the property.

No one was home at the time of the fire and it was suspected that the fire started in the ceiling of the top flat of the house shortly after electricity was restored in the area following an outage.

The family was in Enterprise overseeing the operations of another bar when they were informed of the fire. Nehaul had told Stabroek News that by time they got to their home it was already engulfed and nothing was saved.  Her father, she related was nowhere to been seen when they arrived at their Non Pariel property and searches on Friday night for him were fruitless.  It is unclear how he ended up outside of the zoo.