Crying post mistress guilty of $145,000 theft

THE ANGUISHED cries of acting post mistress Gloria Ramnarine echoed through the Second San Fernando Criminal Court yesterday after the jury found Ramnarine guilty of stealing $145,703.50 from the Government. Ramnarine, 51, is the second post mistress found guilty this month of committing fraud in the Postal Service of the Ministry of Public Utilities. Tara Sankersingh, 49, was sentenced by Justice Mark Mohammed to seven years imprisonment for stealing $4,395.10, by signing and cashing the cheques of 12 deceased pensioners. Coincidentally, both women were said to have stolen the money during a similar period, with Sankersingh committing larceny of the pension cheques between December 1996 to January 1997, while Ramnarine was convicted of stealing the cash between December 1996 and February 1997.

Ramnarine’s verdict came after a two-hour deliberation by an eight-member jury who heard the case before Justice Malcolm Holdip. One of her defence attorneys Nizam Mohammed, criticised the operations at the rural postal office. “The state of affairs of the post office more particularly, the Rio Claro Post Office, when this sum of money was discovered missing could not have been at a lower level. The accused in that setting was left to hold the sticky end of the stick,” Mohammed said. Ramnarine’s arrest in April 1997, came after a spontaneous audit at the Rio Claro Post Office revealed the shortage of $145,703.50 from the safes of the southern post office. The State’s case, led by prosecutor Narissa Ramsundar, was that Ramnarine had possession of keys to the safes when the cash went missing.

Ramsundar also submitted  that Ramnarine exhibited a “pattern of incriminating behaviour,” since the acting post mistress did not make any report to her seniors upon her discovery of the missing money. On February 3, 1997, when she was required to hand over duties to another post mistress, Ramnarine walked out of her workplace and never returned. Ramnarine told her supervisor that she was trying to replace the money, a conversation the accused admitted to on the witness stand. Ramnarine’s explanation for this was that she felt “morally responsible” for the missing money since she was in charge of the southern post office. She testified that when she discovered the money missing, a state of confusion and shock overcame her and she “was not thinking straight.”

In mitigation, Mohammed urged Justice Holdip to consider that Ramnarine was the care-taker of her 28-year-old handicapped daughter Celice, who still resides with Ramnarine at Grant Street, Rio Claro. According to Mohammed, the daughter has half of an arm and is fitted with an artificial leg and relies on Ramnarine to physically care for her. The attorney further asked the judge to consider in sentencing, that the former post mistress had a clean criminal record. Justice Holdip postponed sentencing to Monday and remanded Ramnarine into custody until then.