CHADEE’S MANSION GUTTED

THE DOLE Chadee manor, one of several mansions of an empire built upon a legend of murder and multi million-dollar drug dealings, was reduced to smouldering rubble and ashes when fire, believed to have been maliciously set, raged through and gutted the building on Tuesday night. Miraculously, a Hindu Temple, adorned with gold-trimmed ‘Murtis’ (statues of Hindu deities), located only a few steps away, survived the blaze. The premises on Pascal Road, Piparo, was where Chadee (real name Nankissoon Boodram) lived with his wife, Chandra, and sons Shiva and Sham. Villagers noticed flames at the bottom floor of the sprawling residence around 9 pm, and the fire and police services were called in. One fire tender from the Princes Town fire station arrived at the scene almost one and a half hours later.

By midnight, even with embers still smouldering, villagers claimed the fire services left, since their water supply was exhasted. Police reports estimated the damage at a quarter of a million dollars. Initial investigations from the Fire Prevention Department indicate that the fire was an arson attack. The charred remains of the structure, however, is a far cry from the mansion in which Chadee lived in luxury with his family. The six-bedroom house, villagers told Newsday, was at one time entirely covered in plush carpeting. It also consisted of four bathrooms, two offices and two living rooms. The house was left stripped of its furnishings and abandoned shortly after Chadee was executed by the State on June 4, 1999, along with his murderous gang of eight, for the 1994 murders of a Williamsville family. After her husband was hanged, Chandra and the children moved to Curepe, mainly for security reasons. Police said Shiva, 23, a law student and Sham, 22, were contacted about the fire on the premises, but neither came down until yesterday morning. Another mansion at Princes Town also remains vacant, while a ten-acre estate at Dindial Trace in Piparo, which Chadee named “Hill Top Ranch”, was seized by the government, and in an ironic twist, converted it into a drug rehabilitation centre. It was at the Pascal Road house that police had allegedly found two packets of cocaine hidden in a washing machine on November 14, 1987.

Chadee and his wife were arrested and charged with cocaine trafficking, but he was released after the preliminary inquiry at the San Fernando Magistrates Court. After a ten-year wait, Chandra went on trial and was subsequently acquitted of the charge, on October 22, 1997. Villagers told Newsday yesterday, in the four years it was left unoccupied, no one dared venture into the vacant premises, out of fear doubled with respect for the dead drug baron’s reputation. “Just because of the name Chadee, how he lived and how he died, nobody would go in there”, stated a man, who did not want to be identified. Another woman, who lives a few houses from the Chadee premises, said only on Tuesday night, as fire raged through the manor, she “played fast” and for the first time ever, she stood behind the heavy iron gates (at the front of the Chadee premises) to peer inside as one of the symbols of Chadee’s vast ill-gotten wealth and power, went up in smoke and ashes. Up to late yesterday, no arrests had been made and investigations were continuing.