Prisoner cremated under son’s name

Seiunarine Rambhajan, 44, was strangled to death in the prison where he was awaiting trial, after being arrested for stealing a flask of rum.

But at the time of his arrest, Rambhajan told police his name was Mukesh Bisssoon. Mukesh Bissoon is the name of one of Rambhajan’s four sons.

As a result, he was charged and sent to prison under that name.

The police discovered the name mix-up when they told Rambhajan’s family that he had been killed.

Even so, his autopsy was done at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, in the name of Mukesh Bissoon, which is also on his death certificate.

In spite of a police request to the family to have the name corrected they refused.

Already in grief over his murder, the family just could not wait a week longer, the time it would have taken the police to change the name on the records, Vishnu Bissoon, Rambhajan’s brother-in-law, told Newsday yesterday.

The police wanted to make the correction before the autopsy, Vishnu said after a funeral service at Rambhajan’s Khan Road, Fyzabad home yesterday.

“We did not want to bear the grief for such a long period,” said Vishnu.

Earlier in the service, Rambhajan’s relatives kept calling for justice, as Arouca homicide detectives continue their investigation, in which several prison inmates at Golden Grove were questioned.

When found, Rambhajan’s body bore multiple bruises and the autopsy revealed he died from asphyxiation.

Rambhajan’s sister Tara, who stood next to the white coffin, made a tearful plea: “God give us justice.”

Officiating pastor, Michael Mungal, assured her and Rambhajan’s former wife Narmatee Bissoon, and sons, Mukesh, Narvin, Rajin and Suresh, that God would “judge the killers.”

Although divorced, relatives said Rambhajan loved Narmatee dearly. She was inconsolable as she bade farewell to her ex-husband.

Vishnu explained that Rambhajan and Narmatee’s children carried her surname.

And so, Rambhajan was cremated, at the Shore of Peace, Mosquito Creek, South Oropouche, under his son’s name.