They were madly in love with each other, and none of them trust each other. They were insecure and this led to what happened Monday,” a relative of the woman from East Bank Essequibo, whose reputed husband stabbed her to death then hanged himself, said.
Amrit Hemchand, the 21-year-old man who killed Saleema Mohamed, had reportedly received a phone call on Sunday, December 2 from a male friend, telling him that the woman was seen in her bathroom with her new boyfriend. Hemchand then sneaked into Mohamed’s home on Monday evening when she was bathing, and as soon as she came out the bath, he dealt her the fatal stab.
The dead woman’s relatives are claiming that she had suffered abuse at the hands of Hemchand since they had started living together two years ago, and many times he had threatened to kill her.
Hemchand, formerly a joiner by profession, stabbed the Islamic Academy teacher some six times to her neck on Monday evening at her mother’s home in Zeelugt, before hanging himself under a mango tree at his Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo home. The woman’s grandmother recalled an incident when her granddaughter walked from Tuschen to their Zeelugt home at 02:00hrs, after being abused by Hemchand; but the dead man’s aunt told this newspaper that both her nephew and Mohamed were jealous persons. She noted that they had both contributed equally to the quarrels.
Saleema Mohamed's distraught mother, Parbattie Ramdat, and Mohamed's younger brother
She explained that Hemchand returned to Guyana on December 30, after spending some three months in Trinidad; but since his arrival, he had had several quarrels with Mohamed, even though she had moved out from where they were living at Tuschen and was staying at her mother’s home. The aunt said that Hemchand went to the masjid in the area on Monday afternoon, and arrived home at around 19:00hrs, whereupon he started to call Mohamed on her cell phone.
“After he nah get through to she, he tell me he gon come back home just now, cause he going out; and he go out and come back, and then leave again,” the woman recalled. Later that evening, she said, several policemen came at their home and started to bang on the door. “Where is the bhai?” is what the police ask we, and we tell them that he not home, and dem come and tumble up the house and shy away my mother pot all over. And after doing that, them say that he just kill the girl”, the aunt said.
After searches in the house and yard came up empty-handed, the lawmen left, the aunt said, but later returned after a neighbour saw Hemchand hanging from the mango tree in his yard. Hemchand’s relatives related that the couple often fought over trivial matters, and they were both very insecure. Relatives also said that Mohamed arrived home from work late at nights, and this also triggered Hemchand’s insecurity. “That boy was confused, his wife and he never lived well. Sometimes she used to threaten to kill sheself, and he did the same. She even cut up she hand. Both of them de really love one another,” one of Hemchand’s relatives said.
Monday night’s tragedy
Meanwhile, the dead woman’s mother, Parbattie Ramdat, related that she lived in her house while Mohamed was living alone in another house in the same yard. Ramdat’s 65-yearold mother also lived in the same yard, but in a third house. The shaken mother said that, at around 20:00hrs on Monday, her mother and her niece ran out of the house in which they are living, shouting for help. When she rushed out, she saw her daughter, Saleema, slumped on her bed in a pool of blood.
“She just lean on the bed with she head bend down, and I rush to give she some water; but she wanted to say something but she couldn’t, and I wrap she up. But while we went half way to de cottage hospital, she groan two times and she foot fall, and my daughter die right in de car,” the distraught woman recalled.
The woman said that while Hemchand never behaved badly in her presence, whenever he was alone with Mohamed, he would often threaten to end her life. “She tell me how he does tell she that we will get funeral,” the mother said. The aggrieved woman told this newspaper that, while he was in Trinidad, her son-in-law often called her daughter and accused her of having an affair, which she said was untrue.
