Year: 2016

A mixed jury was on Tuesday empanelled at the Demerara Assizes to begin the trial of Paul Abrams, Claude Craig and Holston Melville who are accused of raping and sodomising a 17-year-old girl in the Barama Complex, Land of Canaan, East Bank Demerara on December 5, 2007. Three of the seven witnesses that the prosecution intends to call testified on Tuesday. Attorney-at-Law Bernard De Santos is representing two of the accused – Craig and Abrams – while Attorneys-at-Law Nigel Hughes and Kezia Williams are representing Melville. The matter is being…

A Kwakwani businessman was released on Gy$400,000 bail on Tuesday when he appeared at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts accused of stealing millions of dollars in items from Chinese-owned logging company BaiShanLin. Sherwin Sealey, 38, of Lot 220 Kwakwani Water Front, Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice), allegedly stole a truck valued at $20 million along with 10 chain saws valued Gy$2,000,000 – all valued Gy$22,000,000 from the logging company between May 20 and 25. Sealey pleaded not guilty to the charge. Police Prosecutor Deniro Jones made no objection to bail, but requested…

The forensic audit conducted into the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) has revealed that the India-based company that was contracted to supply the Government of Guyana with drainage pumps was also supposed to provide several spares, but failed to do so. According to the audit report, compiled by Nigel Hinds, of the US$2.9 million paid to Surendra Engineering Corporation Limited of Mumbai, India, for the acquisition of pumps, some US$126,000 was for the supply of spares. “The spares were never received by NDIA,” the auditor revealed, adding that “consequent…

As thousands in Guyana and many other countries, observe the 36th anniversary of the assassination of Dr Walter Rodney, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) says it is looking forward to the debate in the National Assembly on the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the scholar’s murder. General Secretary of the PPP, Clement Rohee, today told reporters during a media briefing at the party’s headquarters that the PPP is joining with all progressive, democratic and peace loving persons in Guyana and around the world in observing Dr Rodney’s 36th…

The Guyana Prison Service (GPS) has no resources, financial or human, to deal with mentally ill prisoners. This was concluded by the Commission of Inquiry into the deadly Camp Street Prison riot which occurred earlier this year. According to the findings of the CoI report, the GPS was noted as “the major casualty of as an inexcusably primitive approach” to mental health in Guyana. The Commissioners pointed out that even though the prison service lacks the requisite resources to integrate the psychologically challenged inmates; those who pass through the courts…

A post mortem (PM) conducted Monday on the body of a 10-year-old boy who collapsed last Wednesday and died at school is inconclusive, according to the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy. Yogindra Persaud, called ‘Buddy’ or ‘Shawn’ collapsed last Wednesday and died while in his classroom at Graham’s Hall Primary School, Cummings Lodge, Georgetown. The boy’s father Rakesh Persaud was quoted in a section of the media as saying that the doctor did not discover anything significantly wrong to cause the death of the child; however DNA samples were…