Teen burnt in canefield fire fights for life

AN 18-year-old boy is fighting for his life at hospital after nearly his entire body was scorched while trapped in a burning canefield in Penal.

Doctors said that Randy Beharry suffered first degree burns to 75 percent of his body. The teenager is warded in critical condition at the Intensive Care Unit at the San Fernando General Hospital (ICU). Still, Beharry’s mother, Dharmatie, is optimistic that her eldest child will make a recovery. “I think he is coming on,” she told Newsday yesterday at their home at Julien Branch Trace, Barrackpore. “The doctors said he has to take it step by step and day by day and with time, things will get better”. The mother of eight said that physicians have given him a “good chance” of survival. “When it happened, he couldn’t talk or move. He was just groaning when the doctors touched him. Now at least he talking a little bit and could say where the pain is”. The tragic incident occurred on Wednesday around 10.30 am while the teen, who went to make a day’s work to help support his poverty-stricken family, was with some ten other workers cutting and loading cane at Penal Rock Road. Beharry, police reports said, was one of the men controlling the fire line when Beharry became trapped in the blazing field.

According to an eyewitness, canecutter Rajkumar Singh, a strong breeze fanned the flames and Beharry found himself surrounded with fire. As Beharry ran out of the field, his jersey caught afire, and according to Singh,  by the time the teen got out of the blazing field, his entire body was on fire, his shirt burnt off his back. Workers frantically pulled off the boy’s pants and rolled the boy’s body on the ground to douse the flames. He was rushed to hospital and doctors immediately set to work on him. He is currently under round-the-clock watch at the ICU.

According to Dharmatie, Beharry started working only at the start of this crop season as a cane cutter. He previously did jobs in the village or assisted in tending to the family’s animals and crops. Another of her sons, Rajkumar, 14, was also supposed to go with Beharry to work but he stayed home to help their father, Nandlal, to cut rice in the plantations in their village. “He is afraid to go back and cut cane now, frightened the same thing might happen to him,” the mother said. Describing Beharry as devoted to his family, she said her eldest child began working shortly after he finished primary school. The teen did a welding course at YTEPP two years ago but did not complete it. She believes that this year he was trying to earn more money to continue his education. Ag Cpl Jankienanan of the Barrackpore Police Station is continuing investigations.