Demerara Waves Online News- Guyana Riding on the Crest of Truth
Last Updated on Sunday, 22 May 2016, 17:53 by Denis Chabrol
A detective leaves the yard with a bag containing bones retrieved from the shallow grave.
Police on Sunday unearth the remains of Babita Sarju- a woman who was last seen in the company of her husband almost seven years ago- from a shallow grave aback a house in Campbelville.
Head of the Criminal Investigations Department, Senior Superintendent Wendell Blanhum said he was satisfied that the remains were those of Babita Sarjoo that were found aback of a house at 51 Seaforth Street, Campbelville. “The remains were found at the back of a house in a shallow grave which was about three feet in depth,” he said.
Sarjoo, then an employee of BK International, went missing on October 4, 2010 when they both had left to ostensibly view a Diwali Motorcade.
Head of the Criminal Investigations Department, Wendell Blanhum leading a team of detectives out of the yard at 51 Seaforth Street, Campbellville where they said the remains of Babita Sarjoon were found in a shallow grave.
One of the suspects in the killing of Babita Sarjoo being escorted back to police detention after a visit to a yard where her remains were found in a shallow grave.
He said investigators were treating the death as a homicide and that charges would be instituted against Sarjoo’s reputed husband and a friend of his. While the remains would be sent to Trinidad for DNA testing to positively link them to Sarjoo, he said police do not have to await the return of the results before laying charges. “It would not prevent us from instituting any charges. We have established a case against both suspects and we are in contact with the Police Legal Adviser from the initial stage of the investigation and very soon we’ll be able to receive her legal opinion as it relates to instituting charges against both men,” he said.
Blanhum credited the investigators with the success, saying that after “hours and days of painstaking investigation they were able to solicit crucial information which
The area at the back of the yard at 51 Seaforth Street, Campbellville from where police unearthed the skeletal remains of Babita Sarju Sunday afternoon.
would have led this to breakthrough.” He said police were no longer treating the matter as a missing person but it is now a homicide that they were investigating.
Months before Sarjoo’s disappearance, her reputed husband, Anand Naraine, had been acquitted of exposing nude photographs of her on vehicles and the fence at BK International.
Program Director of Caribbean American Domestic Violence Awareness (CADVA), Dianne Madray, who rushed down to the scene, told Demerara Waves Online News welcomed the breakthrough but lamented the fact that it took so long. “I am glad that we have come to this point, but unfortunately it’s a little too late with the grief and all the stuff that has to happen now…This should have been done six years ago had they listened to me when I told them to come and check this @#$%^& property, this would not have come to this point so I am very angry,” she said. Asked why she always believed that the body was buried in a shallow grave there, she said she was told there was a new structure that was
Babita Sarjoo
on the premises and she had asked police to ensure that they go and investigate that new structure. “It didn’t seem that the investigation was handled in the way that it should have so had we done all of this diligently, we didn’t have to go through six years of this,” he said.
Meanwhile, a custody battle could be looming over the custody of the 10-year old boy who is now at the Seaforth Street home where he, his father and his new partner now live.
Lawyers have advised Naraine’s mother that the child could not be handed over to Sarjoo’s mother unless a court order has been granted.