Young reveller found with skull bashed in outside wedding house

Jul 13, 2011 News

Seventeen-year-old Ravindra Persaud was having a good time at a wedding house on Monday night until he disappeared when he left to go outside, probably to pass some urine. Nine hours later, his lifeless body was found lying on the parapet, not far from where he was last seen dancing with family and friends.
The victim’s head bore signs of a brutal beating and since no one saw what had transpired, investigators will be hard pressed to determine the circumstances surrounding his death. They have certainly ruled out robbery/murder since Persaud’s cellular phone and $2000 were found in his pocket and his gold stud earring was still in his ear when his body was discovered.

ead: Ravindra Persaud

Hit-and-run has also been dismissed as no signs of a vehicular accident was observed anywhere near the scene.
So who could have been responsible for Persaud’s death?
Police in a press release yesterday stated that they are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Ravindra Persaud, 17, of Supply, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara, whose body was found along the roadway (Branch Road) at No. 10 Village, Mahaica Creek, at about 07:30 hours yesterday.
A relative of the dead youth told investigators that Persaud had arrived with some of his cousins at the wedding house around 19:30 hours, and was drinking vodka and dancing just like most of the other attendees.
The relatives said that Persaud did not appear to have any problem with anyone at the venue.
One family member said that around 21:30 hours, Persaud disappeared and there were enquiries about his whereabouts.
“Me brother start fuh ring he cell phone but it ring out. We ask some people who de stand up pon de road and dey seh dem ain’t see he,” the relative was overheard telling investigators at the scene yesterday.
However, no one checked the area where Persaud’s body was eventually found, since it was very dark on Monday night.
“He is not a problem when he drinks. He didn’t pick no fight,” the relative stated.
There was another wedding approximately three miles away along the same Branch Road and since the persons there were in some way related to those at the wedding Persaud attended, his relatives decided to check there too, in case he had somehow wandered off the other location.
But again there was no trace of the young man.
“He nah tell nobody nothing, he just disappear,” a cousin, Deodat Hemraj, told this newspaper.
“We thought that he deh at de other wedding and because de music ah play he nah hear de phone,” Hemraj stated. He said that after exhausting all the possible places Persaud could have been, he and the others resigned until day clean.
Then at around 07:30 hours yesterday, a little boy and his father were walking along the road, a few metres from the wedding house, when they heard feint ringing of a cellular phone in the grass on the parapet.
Initially, they thought that someone had dropped their instrument and started to comb the grass when they made a shocking discovery.
The phone was ringing in Persaud’s pants pocket as his body lay motionless in the grass with blood oozing from the nostrils.
The little boy ran and informed Persaud’s relatives who went to the area and confirmed their worst fears.

Persaud’s mother Meena Manger (in hammock) grieves with other relatives.

Meena Kumarie Mangal, the dead youth’s mother, related to this newspaper that her son had informed her that he was going to the ‘Kangan’ on Monday evening. She said that although she knew that her second son was not a trouble maker, she still warned him to be careful.
When he did not return home on Monday night, she suspected that a lack of transportation forced him to spend the night at relatives in the Number 10 De Hoop area.
But yesterday morning she got a message that her son was lying in the grass, bleeding though his nose.
“Me put on me clothes and me go. When me reach, me meet am dead,” Mangal told Kaieteur News.
Persaud’s father, Prem, was working in Berbice when he got the tragic message early yesterday morning.
He immediately travelled to Mahaica, but did not go to the scene where his son’s body was discovered. Instead he went straight home where he was greeted with the news that the remains had already been taken to the mortuary.
He too had warned his son to be careful at the wedding house when he left for Berbice last Saturday.
“Actually de wedding house was sheer cousins, so me was confident that he would ah been in safe hands. But I don’t know what play out deh,” Prem Persaud told Kaieteur News.
There are reports that there was some trouble at the wedding house earlier before Persaud and his cousins arrived, and there is the suggestion that the young man could have been mistakenly identified and attacked.
Police ranks, including new Divisional Commander Derrick Josiah, were at the scene carrying out investigations.