“I just need answers, I need closure. My son is dead, and we don’t know what happened,” 72-year-old Martha Persaud said. “I have climbed so many stairs and dropped off so many letters but still no answers.”
Persaud’s only son Nezaam Khan was found lying face down in a pool of blood in the driveway of the Republic Bank Diamond branch. He was 46 years old and since that night of November 30, 2018 when a police officer picked him up and took him to the hospital in an unconscious state there have been no answers for Persaud and her 76-year-old husband Nazeem Khan.
“I don’t know what to do but I need answers. We are grieving and we need answers,” she told me when she contacted me by telephone.
“I usually read you. [I was reading] long before my son died, and I just got your number to call because I don’t know what else to do. You will decide what you will do,” she said.
Khan, called ‘Damian,’ of Lot 1159 Section ‘A’ Block X, Diamond Housing Scheme, was an employee of the Ministry of Education. He was found in the middle of the night, transported by the police to the Diamond Hospital, from where he was taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH), where he died the following morning. An autopsy revealed that he had died as a result of blunt trauma to the head and cerebral haemorrhage. At the time of his death he was on leave from his job as an engineer.
“I believe there is a cover-up, that somebody hit him or knock him down or something and they don’t want us to know. The thing that they need to get is the CCTV camera, the bank has the camera pointing to the driveway right where my son was found and the police don’t have the footage,” the grieving mother said.
“You know, he was our only son and when he died at the hospital, my husband get black out; they had to put him on a stretcher. It was horrible and we need to find answers.
“The DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions] ordered an inquest but up to now no paperwork is filed in the court.
“I remember that night. I called him, and he said he was with some friends and will come home at around 10 pm. When that time pass, I keep calling him and no answer I even called the hospital and they told me that they had no unidentified patient, but he was right there. I even called a friend and the friend went looking for him but didn’t find him,” she shared.
It was the next morning with the assistance of the police they located their only child at the GPH.
“As soon as I saw his feet, I told my husband is our child, but they didn’t allow us to really see him. They told us they wanted to do a CT scan and I went to look that after and get the arrangements but then they called back and told me he did not make it,” she said, pausing.
She did not speak for a while.
“When we found him in the hospital, he had on no clothes just pampers and the hospital said they had nothing for him. But when I spoke to the police who took him, he said he took him fully clothed with shoes everything and that he took his personal belongings like his cell phone, his belt and so and put it in a plastic bag and give the hospital. He said, ‘Madam I took your son fully clad in his clothes,” she recounted.
“And there is a video. The police took a video when they found him, and he was clothed and was lying on his tummy just like a baby in a pool of blood.
“You know I went back to the hospital with my sister and they were rude even the guards and they told me that he came with nothing. I filed a complaint on March 13th last, but I have not heard anything since.
“Something is going on. Somebody was using his phone, because when I call it ringing out and when I tell the police the officer tell me I must leave a message, but I said I can’t do that, and he said he would do it. Then one day I called from my cell and then the landline and somebody called back, and I ask them how they got the number and that is my son’s number and they said they got it from Regent Street. I was a little threatened for my life because they called back on landline, but I never went back to the police and tell them.
“I don’t know what really happened to my child. We just trying to get answers. I don’t know all his friends, he might have had the good, the bad and the ugly but you know what he was a kind and helpful person, he helped everyone,” she said of her only child.
Persaud, a retired chef who once worked at the Pegasus Hotel and also managed the Queenstown Inn now the Herdmanston Lodge, has since written letters to Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan seeking his intervention to get access to the CCTV footage, as well as to Commissioner of Police Leslie James and even the Police Complaints Authority. She has received no response to any of those missives.
“You know the investigating officers keep moving and the last time I went to the court because I went to the DPP office and they tell me they recommend an inquest and I should check the court to see if the papers file. I went and when I hear no papers file, is in tears I went to Brickdam to see Commander Marlon Chapman. I couldn’t see him, but I see an officer, Mr Singh, and he tell me to call him. I call him up to yesterday [June 12] and he said the paper is with somebody,” the frustrated mother said.
I asked her how they were coping.
“Right now, I don’t go anywhere, I am just in the house mourning,” she said candidly.
“I only leave the house to go grocery shopping and we would go to town to do personal errands and come back. To be honest we don’t have any money. All our money was in my son’s account and it was only the next week he was to take me to make the account a joint one, but he died. We got a lawyer and filed a letter of administration, but we are still waiting.
“And you know I have three folders of paperwork because I climb so many stairs and write so many letters but still, we can’t get no closure. I have the folders right here on his bed.
“I am still waiting on answers. I am still waiting on closure.
“It is not an easy thing when you raise a child, you know, try to make him comfortable; he don’t have no student loan, no mortgage and it was like all in vain because he is now dead and just me and his father left.
“I went away a little while, but he was an adult already and you know I am happy I came back to spend some time with him because I don’t know what I would have done.
“And you know he had many girlfriends. I don’t why he never married, he was such a sweet kid,” and she laughed for the first and only time during the interview as she spoke those words.
“I thank God I got to spend some time with my son. But right now, we are waiting. We have no money. I get NIS pension and we get old age pension and that help to buy food, but we can’t do nothing else. Is my sisters paying all our bills.
“But to be honest, my main concern is to get closure for my son’s death. We don’t sleep in this house. We sleep, we wake up, we sleep again. I hardly can sleep and my husband too, the two of them use to always be together,” she said.
We ended the conversation shortly after and she promised to come and see me, saying, “I like to see who I am speaking to.”
I hope this sister receives closure soon.
