Garnett Street murder/suicide…My mother was not a money grabber-says dead woman’s daughter

Nov 26, 2013 News

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Relatives of 42-year-old Siromani Lokhnauth are convinced that her husband, Ramdat, carefully planned the murder/suicide and lured the woman back to Guyana.
The woman’s relatives also slammed reports that suggested that she was a “money grabber”.
Lokhnauth’s daughter, Renuka Chattergoon, who flew into Guyana from the United States of America immediately after her mother’s death, told this newspaper that from all indications her stepfather

premeditated his act.
“He premeditated…because two days before, you make your will and then, apart from that, from what I understand…he even told his son that he had a grey suit and if anything should happen to him, he wanted to be buried in that.
“I hear it around the wake and I wouldn’t put that past my stepdad because, that’s the type of person he is. He sits, he plans and then he executes,” Chattergoon said.
The woman’s family only learnt about the will when an attorney who was representing Lokhnauth’s husband, informed them after his death.
Ramdat Lookhnauth, called ‘Moses’ used his licenced pistol to kill his wife while she was apparently asleep at their Garnett Street, Campbellville home and then turned the weapon on himself.
It was the second murder suicide in Georgetown for the month. There was a similar incident on November 11 when 21-year-old Kenroy Crandon slit his lover Bibi Sharriza’s throat, before taking his own life.
Renuka Chattergoon said that she is convinced that her stepfather was very possessive, judging from the extreme measure he took after his wife apparently refused to make up with him.
“That was not a heroic thing he did. Think about it; you shoot two kids’ mom and then, do you have the stomach to watch them in the face and say ‘I took your mom’? I believe the reason he shot himself is not because he wanted to be dead the same time she’s dead; it is because maybe reality hit him. I don’t know if his demons started raising and it was talking to him, because he had a lot of demons,” the dead woman’s daughter said.
She was very upset by the picture that was painted of her mother, claiming that it was irresponsible for persons to publish false details about her mother’s relationship with her husband.
“My mom wasn’t fighting for $75 million or a whole lot of money. My stepfather was the one who asked for a divorce because he said she was running down the business and all of that. But my mom was the brains of the business.”
“In the newspaper they said that my mother walked out on my dad; that’s not true.”
This newspaper had reported that friends of the now dead businessman said that he had worked his way up from a shop in the market.
“I sense this boy Moses was provoked. She was just evil. Money fly to she head. She just vicious,” a friend had claimed.
However, Chattergoon refuted this. “Everybody’s assumption was that she was leaving for money. People feel money is always the reason, but not in everybody’s case. My mom’s reason for leaving is because she thought that she deserved better.”
She said that her mother was even settling for less than she deserved in the divorce settlement with her husband.
According to Chattergoon, her mother was supposed to be given half of the assets that she and her husband owned.
But the husband had claimed that he did not have the resources to give her her share of the assets.  Siromani Lokhnauth, called Nadia, eventually settled for quarter.
“Everything in that house was built to her specification…without her it wouldn’t have been there. Yet she was walking away. She thought it was the smartest thing to do because of the many threats that she got,” Chattergoon stated.
The woman explained that after her stepfather’s loan application was turned down at one bank, he sought her mother’s help to secure it from another bank.
She said that the man even begged her to convince her mother to help him.
“My stepfather called us in the States no less than fifteen times a day, so you can tell that he was possessive…but my mother would tell him, ‘Moses, there is no love left in me for you and I believe that got to him,” Chattergoon told Kaieteur News.
But why did her mother trust her stepfather so much as to go out with him, have lunch and dinner with him and then go home with him, when in fact she was scheduled to stay at a relative on the East Coast of Demerara during her stay in Guyana.
“She probably did that because he was going to everyone, asking them to beg her to take him back. It probably placed her on a guilt trip and she let her guard down.”
Another thing that upset Chattergoon was the report that her mother had received flowers from another man whom her husband suspected was her lover.
“I don’t know where they cooked that up from, but I can tell you that the person that they may have believed that she was seeing is none other than a pastor that was helping us find an apartment in the States,” Chattergoon explained.
“This guy, he is very old. You can’t put my mom with him. He’s like a father figure. My stepfather knew this man as well,” she added.
She admitted that the murder of her mother and her stepfather’s suicide did surprise her although there were signs that the man was volatile and was potentially violent.

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