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Foulis shallow grave…. Body buried after attempt to burn it failed
A Foulis, East Coast Demerara man has provided police investigators with details of how he tried to burn the body of 51-year-old Gangaram Bharat before burying it in a shallow grave in his 14th Street backyard.
The man, Joel Persaud, was captured yesterday afternoon at Hampshire, Corentyne where he and his wife had fled on Tuesday, a day before the decomposing body of Bharat was pulled from a three-foot deep grave.
Gangaram Bharat
Persaud confessed to bludgeoning Bharat with a sledgehammer following a row over alcohol. He was apprehended when he tried to collect $30,000 from his mother to enable him to flee to neighbouring Suriname.
Kaieteur News understands that the suspect had contacted his mother and requested that she bring the money to Berbice where he and his wife were hiding out.
But instead of taking the money to her son, the woman contacted the police and a plan was hatched to capture him.
Accompanied by police ranks the woman travelled to the Corentyne where she identified her son and his wife who were waiting patiently for the cash.
He told investigators that on Friday night he and Bharat were indeed imbibing with other neighbours who eventually left them and went home.
Persaud told investigators that some time around 01:30 hours on Saturday, he became tired and wanted to retire to bed but Bharat would not let him since the alcohol was not finished.
The suspect said that he got angry and threw away the remaining liquor and this led to an ugly confrontation between him and Bharat.
During the confrontation, Persaud allegedly picked up a sledgehammer and struck Bharat on his head.
A post mortem examination performed on Bharat’s body yesterday revealed that he died as a result of a fractured skull.
Persaud, according to a reliable source, confessed that he panicked and tried to dispose of Bharat’s body by burning it.
But when this failed, he decided to dig a shallow grave in the hope of concealing the dead man’s body to cover up the murder.
However, his plans unraveled when Bharat’s sister, Eunice Joe-Samuels, came looking for him and he was reported missing.
Joe-Samuels told this newspaper that on Saturday, she received a telephone call from her brother’s tenant, who informed her that he did not come home the previous night.
She said that after the tenants continued to call her repeatedly, she decided to leave her home and go to Foulis to investigate.
She made a missing person report at the Enmore Police Outpost after learning that he was last seen drinking in 14th Street.
She returned to the area every day after that, all the while making enquiries about her missing brother.
“Me so confuse, me deh up down, up down ah search all over de place, all over Dazzell Scheme me deh search,” the dead man’s sister said.
According to Joe-Samuels, the owner of the house where her brother’s body was found began acting strangely after he learnt that she was looking for Bharat.
Neighbours said that the man and his wife were seen leaving the house on Monday with packed suitcases.
She said that her suspicions grew and on Wednesday she returned to the Enmore police with a view of getting a rank to accompany her to search the tightly locked up property in question.
Her suspicions reached fever pitch when upon entering the yard, she saw her brother’s hat in an abandoned car that was parked there.
She and the two police ranks eventually went to the back of the yard where they were hit with a pungent smell.
They then stumbled upon a pile of sand and mud which was covered with pieces of old wood and plastic and they immediately sensed that it was a shallow grave.
After sending Joe-Samuels outside, the ranks commenced digging and soon enough they came upon the body.
“At first we butt up with de foot and when we dig more we see like dey buss open he belly. He guts been outside,” a source told this newspaper.
Such was the state of the body that it took police several hours to pull it from the grave without damaging it.
Yesterday, neighbours saw the police return to the house with the heavily shackled Persaud and left clutching a sledgehammer which they were told is the murder weapon.
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