Home-cooked meal arrives too late for man who hanged himself

Relatives of the man accused of murdering Rishi Nanlal looked on in horror yesterday as his lifeless body was wheeled out of the Siparia Police Station. Dianand Persad, 33, a Guyanese national, was discovered hanging in a cell, less than two hours before he was due to appear in the Siparia Magistrates’ Court. Persad reportedly tied a red cord, which was used to hold up his pants in place of a belt, to hang himself. District Medical Officer Dr Furlonge viewed the body and ordered its removal to the Forensic Science Centre in Port-of-Spain, where an autopsy was due to be performed yesterday.

Moments after the body was found, Persad’s wife, 21-year-old Elizabeth, walked into the Siparia Police Station with a home-cooked meal for her husband, only to be told that he had hanged himself. “When she (Elizabeth) come back home she run in the bedroom and was crying,” Persad’s father, Ganpath, told Newsday yesterday from his Mora Dam Road, Siparia home. The elderly man said he thought she was upset because he did not have the $500 she had asked him to  pay a lawyer. He said after Elizabeth left he told his daughter, Dolly, to go to the court and give the money to Elizabeth.

When she arrived there, her neighbours told her the police said Persad had hanged himself. “I doh know what really happen. But we don’t think that he killed anyone,” Dolly  said, adding, “He (Persad) was not a violent person.” However, Persad, in a confession statement to the police, said he believed Nanlal, his next door neighbour, was having an affair with his wife. He said last Friday he got into a fight with him and struck him with a “crook stick” on his head.

Nanlal’s body was discovered two days later in some bushes at the back of his (Nanlal’s) house. Ganpath, 77, said when his son got married six months ago he moved to Timital Road, San Francique, Penal and to his knowledge, the couple had a happy marriage. “My son never said if he was having any problems in his marriage,” he added. Elizabeth, who had been staying by her in-laws since her husband’s arrest, yesterday went to witness the autopsy at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, Port-of-Spain. ASP Jammot is spearheading investigations.