A HEARTLESS CRIME

IN the last couple of years we have grown accustomed to and perhaps even immune to tragedies that have caused us to question not merely our sanity, but even our humanity. Brutal killings, kidnappings and murders have caused at least one religious leader to wonder whether there was a curse on this land. Yet horrified as we have been at the level of man’s inhumanity to man to which we have so sadly been witness in recent years, in Trinidad and Tobago this weekend there must be very few who do not feel a sense of outrage or are not totally appalled at the abduction and murder of a young woman who was born without the physical abilities we so often take for granted, hearing and speech.

Aneesher Rangoo, 20 years old, pretty and playing her role — limited though it might have been in her family’s home industry — was unable to hear or speak. A deaf-mute was how she was referred to by the police who were called to her home last Sunday after three men stormed the family house in Dow Village, California, chopped her mother, sister and her sister-in-law, stole their money and jewelry and, not content with that, snatched young Aneesher and took her away in a car. Her family prayed and begged those responsible to return her safely to her home, but to no avail. Five days later, on Friday, her decomposing body was found in a teak forest. What an unspeakable crime! What sort of monsters are capable of such devilish action? In her last hours – for it seems she was killed immediately upon abduction – what could have been the thoughts of this innocent young woman who could neither hear what was going on around her as her family must have screamed at the criminals, nor scream herself at what was being done to her?

Already born with two major disdvantages, what offence did she commit to have such a sentence of death passed on her? Even convicted criminals before our courts get a chance to speak and they certainly can hear the charges against them. There was no such right for young Aneesher whose death at the hands of heartless wicked men sickens us. All murder is wrong. It is dreadful. It turns our stomachs. But to snatch a deaf-mute young woman and brutally put her to death leaves us speechless at the cruelty and inhumanity of the perpetrators, who it seems to us knew of her disabilities, and what her abduction would mean to her family. Our hope this Sunday morning is that the police will do everything in their power to hunt down these men and bring them to the justice they deserve. The police have suggested that the killers were not seeking a ransom. The intention therefore was to kill this young defenceless woman whom life had already challenged. A more heartless crime we can hardly imagine.