‘Panyol’ chopped to death

His death comes weeks after his mother Sylvia Seecharan passed away last December.

Relatives said Seecharan had not yet gotten over the death of his mother. “They were very close and he missed her a lot and was still grieving for her which was why he spent a lot more time in the garden,” sisterin- law Prematee Seecharan told Newsday.

Police are working on the theory that Seecharan may have been confronted by thieves who often raided his crops. Relatives said Seecharan complained to them about the constant raid on his crops. Seecharan was chopped on the head, face and back. Investigators believe he was killed on the day he went missing.

His body was discovered at 8 pm on Thursday by relatives who went in search of him after calls to his phone went unanswered and his house remained locked.

Seecharan lived alone at Tabaquite Main Road. “We decided to check the garden because that is where he would be when he was not home,” a relative said.

At 8 pm on Thursday, the search party stumbled upon his body 60 feet from the roadway, in his garden.

The victim’s sister Theresa Villafana with whom he shared a close relationship, suffered a heart attack on being told he was found dead and remains warded at San Fernando Teaching Hospital.

“He was quiet and never troubled anyone,” nephew Akbar Shah, 23, said. “It is really terrible how they killed him in his own garden. He worked real hard.” Seecharan cultivated crops including breadfruit, banana, coconut and peewah on his ten-acre plantation. He worked as a labourer with the Ministry of Works in Rio Claro and was unmarried, with no children.

An autopsy was expected to be done yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre in St James.

No arrest has been made in what is the nation’s 56th murder for the year.