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Abusive husband sets house alight

Dec 16, 2009 News


– leaves wife and five children homeless

By Brushell Blackman

A woman and her five children are now homeless after her reputed husband set their house on fire.
Twenty-eight year-old Ramrattie Roopchand, of 111 Phase Two, Good Hope, East Coast Demerara, is left to contemplate her next move after the father of her children, Anand Surujband, called ‘Chucky’ reportedly set their house on fire early Tuesday morning.
According to Roopchand, the burning of the two-bedroom house is the culmination of thirteen years of physical abuse she endured at the hands of the 35-year-old Surujband who is now on the run.
Recounting the hours before the incident, Roopchand said that Surujband, who is a heavy drinker, was called early Monday morning by his brother who lives nearby to indulge in a session of alcohol drinking. She said that no sooner had he left, he returned and asked for a meat bird (from the forty-five that the two were rearing) to prepare to use as ‘cutters’.
The distraught woman said that she objected and this move did not sit well with the seemingly intoxicated man who began to physically assault her.
“Oh God boy a suh he start fuh beat me, kick me in meh face and belly”. Satisfied that he had beaten her enough, Surujband left and according to the woman, he went to his mother’s residence a few villages away where he continued his imbibing.
The woman said that Surujband returned home sometime around six-thirty that afternoon and resumed beating her. She said that the second attack was more severe, as neighbours looked on.
Roopchand said this assault ended when the man eventually left to buy some items at a nearby shop.
She recounted that she has endured such vicious treatment from the time they began living together.
The woman said that she never reported any of the beatings to the police until now. She admitted that she did not want him to be locked up, since she was unemployed, and felt she would be unable to support the children.
Neighbours who gathered to give their version of events said that the man habitually beats his wife and would always threaten to “burn down the house”. They said that they did not make much of those threats, (which were made again during the latest beatings), since Surujband is most times intoxicated and “not himself”.
According to Sumeda Rampersaud, a neighbour whose house was scorched by the fire, after the man returned and did not find the woman and children at home he became even more infuriated. The woman said that the man became abusive, accusing her of hiding his wife in her home. She said after much pleading for the man to cease his noisy behaviour at that time of the morning he left and went to his mother-in law’s residence where he verbally abused the residents there.
Roopchand said that she told him that she was not returning home until daybreak since she feared another beating. During exchanges with the woman and her relatives, the man said that he was proceeding to burn down the house in which he and Roopchand lived. She said he soon left and less than 15 minutes later the family received a telephone call informing them that the house was on fire.
A neighbour said that the man asked to borrow a box of matches under the pretext of needing to light a cigarette but she did not lend him, since she thought that the man indeed wanted to set the house on fire.  The woman said mere minutes after she saw smoke billowing through the window, followed by a raging fire. The woman said that fearful that her house would have been consumed by the blaze she called out to neighbours who formed a bucket brigade and soaked her house, saving it in the process. The woman said that just after the fire started, Surujband calmly walked out the yard, mounted his bicycle and disappeared into the night.
Speaking to Kaieteur News yesterday, Roopchand said that she built the house with assistance from relatives and friends, and that her reputed husband never contributed anything.
Apart from twenty of the 45 meat birds that were being reared by the family, she was unable to save anything. Roopchand and her five children are now staying at her mother.

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