Suspect commits suicide

Police believed she had turned down the sexual advances of a PH driver before she was beaten to death.

Panicked by his actions, the killer, Chunlal Ramsaroop, 27, drove to his home, parked his car, took a bottle of weedicide and walked to Martin Trace, off Arena Road, Freeport, where he ingested the weedicide. His body was discovered at about 3 pm on Monday by a gardener. When the body was found no one knew that schoolgirl Zareen was murdered.

However, when she failed to return home from classes on Monday from the Carapichaima West Secondary School, alarm bells went off. Her father, Shaban Mohammed, who is the driver for a High Court judge, carried out checks to find out why his daughter had not returned home. He called her school, and was told she had not turned up for classes on Monday. Mohammed and relatives carried out searches for Zareen, but they did not link her disappearance to Ramsaroop’s.

The Mohammed family kept vigil all of Monday night and even offered support to the relatives of Ramsaroop during a wake held for him on Monday. Late Monday, a villager recalled seeing Zareen in the car driven by Ramsaroop. The Freeport Police was told of this new information and a search was mounted close to where the body of Ramsaroop was found.

At about 8 am yesterday, the body of Zareen was found, her school shirt neatly tucked in her skirt, her hands bound with a belt, and her feet tied with her shoe laces, was found. Her head appeared to have been battered. Not too far from where her body lay, her schoolbag was found. Homicide officers cordoned off the area, and a district medical official had the body removed to the Forensic Sciences Centre, St James. Fareed Ali, an uncle of the dead girl described her as an intelligent and God- fearing person.

He said she had travelled with Ramsaroop for the past two years, and no one knew that he was someone not to be trusted.