Manohar’s niece slain in Toronto

THE NIECE of UNC Member of Parliament Manohar Ram-saran, who was reported missing with her husband last Friday, has been strangled. he body of 25-year-old Hemattie Roopdial was discovered by a relative on Monday night wrapped in a bag and placed in a closet in the bedroom of an apartment which she shared with her 32-year-old husband Dillraj “Tony” Roopdial in Toronto, Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have now launched a countrywide search for Roopdial following the discovery of the couple’s car on Saturday morning. They have also asked the Trinidad and Tobago Police to be on the lookout for Roopdial who may try to enter Trinidad, his home country, he being originally from Chaguanas.

Yesterday, Manohar Ramsaran confirmed the gruesome death of his niece. “I had just left the UNC meeting in Fyzabad when I got a call around midnight from my wife that they found Hema’s body in the closet of the apartment.” Ramsaran said he could not believe that his niece was dead. “She was so pretty, such a nice person. She was well behaved, Tony was also good, he was nice to us. They were a very good couple, I don’t know what happened, it is really shocking,” the former UNC Government Minister added. Ramsaran said Hemattie and Tony met in Canada in the 1990s and started dating following which they came back to Trinidad and got married under Hindu rites. “They went back there in 1999 and everything seemed to have been going alright. They have two children, Nicholas, 4 and Sara, 5. I now know how Nizam Baksh is feeling.” Ramsaran said he has not been able to get a lot of information because the Canadian Police have sealed off the area surrounding the Roopdials’ apartment at Kipling Avenue, Brampton.
The UNC MP said his brother Ganesh (Hemattie’s father) left yesterday for Canada. Hemattie’s mother travelled to Canada on Monday even before the body was discovered. Hemattie and her husband went missing last Friday after they left home to go to a travel agency in Mississauga to collect airline tickets for her sister Seema Ramsaran and her two children to travel to Trinidad yesterday to spend the summer holidays with her parents. According to reports, Hemattie collected the airline tickets, and that was the last time she was seen alive. Investigators believe that Hemattie was strangled and her body taken back to the house, placed in a bag and put in the closet of the couple’s bedroom.

When Hemattie’s sister Seema did not see the couple on Friday night, she called the police. A search for the couple resulted in the recovery of their car at El Dorado Park, Brampton, west of Toronto. Police conducted searches of several areas over the weekend, but the couple was not found. Seema said she spent Friday night in the apartment with the two children not knowing that her sister’s body was in the closet all that time. Relatives gathered at the apartment over the weekend and kept a prayer vigil. The discovery was made on Monday night when a relative went into the closet to get a sweater for the children’s grandmother.

“We stayed in the living room and the other bedroom, never once going into their bedroom for the entire weekend,” one relative added.  It was only on Monday night when someone went to get a sweater for Hema’s mom, that her body was found in the closet. It was there all the time.” Investigators learnt that Hemattie obtained a restraining order against her husband two years ago, but the couple reconciled and were living together in the apartment with their children and Seema. They bought a new house in Brampton to which they were planning to move in June. Investigators were told that Hemattie complained that her marriage was not working and had indicated to her husband that she was going to file for divorce.