Chandroutie blames
husband for baby's murder

MURDER ACCUSED Chandrouti London testified in the High Court yesterday that her husband, Kenrick, covered the mouth of their daughter, Vidya, until she went “numb and motionless”.

The mother said when she tried to intervene, Kenrick hit her, and physically prevented her from reaching the child, by standing on her (Chandrouti’s) feet.

According to Chandrouti, Kenrick often covered the child’s mouth to stop her crying, sometimes even putting a pillow over the child’s face. When she asked why he would do that, Kenrick told her she was doing “spiritual things”.

Chandrouti went into the witness box in the San Fernando Criminal Assizes yesterday, and spoke of the years of abuse and control she suffered at the hands of her husband, Kenrick, a self-confessed preacher.

The mother told the court when Vidya was born, her husband insisted that she should only breast-feed the infant. He bathed, dressed and looked after the child.

According to Chandrouti, Kenrick said he and the baby were “spiritual persons” and she was not allowed to interfere when he was with the child. She said when Vidya, who was approximately eight months old at the time of her death, stopped moving, Kenrick took the baby outside and bathed and dressed the tiny body before throwing it into a latrine they used at the back of their house at Caratal Road, Gasparillo.

Chandrouti recalled that Kenrick entered her life while she was a teenager when he came to her family’s house and convinced them he could communicate with her dead father.

She said one day Kenrick took the family to the seaside near Flower Pot in Claxton Bay, where he rubbed her mother, two brothers, sister and herself with “commanding oil and compelling liquid”, before performing a ritual with them tied together in a circle.

At age 17 she became pregnant for Kenrick and one year later, in 1992, they were married and she moved out from her family’s house. However, she said, that was when the “disagreements” started, and Kenrick abused her physically and sexually.

The case continues today before Justice Ivor Archie and a 12-member mixed jury hearing the case in the Third Court.