Latest update November 13th, 2024 1:00 AM
Crippled man found dead in septic tank, house set ablaze
The septic tank in which Haniff’s body was found
Abdul Azeem Haniff
By Jenelle Carter
Up to late yesterday evening, police were in the Mon Repos Pasture, East Coast Demerara area taking statements, in an attempt to come up with a possible motive for the setting afire of a crippled pensioner’s house and the discovery of his body in a septic tank aback of the building.
Reports are that sometime around 06:00 hours yesterday, relatives found the body of 54-year-old Abdul Azeem Haniff called ‘Panjax’ in the septic tank. The man was reportedly found with his feet upright and his upper body submerged in sewage.
One of the dead man’s sisters, Bibi Zorena Haniff, who lives about three houses away from where the incident took place, said she last saw her brother alive on Wednesday evening. Ms. Haniff said she was going to shop in the area when she saw her brother sitting on a chair in front of his door.
“I saw him and I called out to him and he said he was fine.”
The woman recalled that not long after she retired to bed, but around 01:30hrs she received a call from a neighbour, indicating that her brother’s house was on fire.
“By the time I got there, persons had already started to break the windows to get into the house to put out the fire.”
The woman said that not long after, a fire tender arrived, but by then the blaze had died down, and was contained to only a bedroom.
“By that time there was a large crowd in the street, so I started asking around for my brother because I know he can’t walk, so I was thinking that somebody may have taken him out of the house or he got burned on the bed,”.
Having realized that her brother was nowhere in sight, and his remains had not been seen in the house, the woman said she and other relatives began a frantic search, but gave up after awhile.
The sister recounted that at dayclean, one of their other siblings showed up, and they began another search.
“We start searching again and then my brother suggested that we check the septic tank, so we open the cover and the first thing we saw was his foot.”
Ms. Haniff said the police were again summoned to the scene and her brother’s remains were removed. The woman speculated that whoever placed her brother in the septic tank may have killed him in the house first.
“If somebody had bring him out of the house alive he would have made noise, so I think he was killed in the house,” the grieving woman said, adding that from all appearances, the person or persons who attacked her brother, had gained entry from a window to his bedroom.
She explained that the bolt on the window had been ripped out and it looked as though the fire was set in the bedroom where her brother slept. Ms. Haniff said her brother’s belongings were ransacked, as robbery appeared to have been the motive for the attack.
“The box where he kept his money was tumbled up and papers were scattered about the place.”
Abdul Azeem Haniff is survived by three daughters, but lived alone, and has been crippled for some five years, after a freak accident at an estate.
In the meantime, his sister is calling on residents of the area to come forward with whatever information they have, so that the mystery of her brother’s grisly demise can be solved. This publication was told that one of the man’s immediate neighbours has surveillance cameras and they may have captured some useful images.
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