Two murdered girls…two unsolved cases…DO YOU KNOW THE BATH SETTLEMENT KILLER?

Jul 09, 2017 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

By Michael Jordan
A distraught mom, Claudette David, claimed that on Monday, September 8, 2008, she watched from her Lot 122 Block ‘D,’ Bath Settlement, West Berbice home, as her 13-year-old daughter, Kavita Panday, rode on a bicycle she had borrowed from a neighbour.
Ms. David would later tell the police that a 16-year-old boy was riding next to her daughter. Ms. David said that she observed that some of her cattle had strayed into a cash-crop farm, and she assumed that the boy was accompanying Kavita to chase the cows.
Claudette David would also tell the police that it was nearing 2pm when she went to call her daughter, and realised that Kavita had not returned. She became concerned when she spotted the bicycle that her daughter had used and also saw that the cows were still in the farm.
The worried mother, allegedly accompanied by the same 16-year-old boy, began to search for the missing girl. Scouring an area near a trench, Ms. David noticed a pair of green slippers her daughter had bought for Mrs. David’s birthday, along with the teen’s blue cap.
Ms. David’s husband, Rajesh Panday, who had joined in the search, found his daughter’s body face-down at the corner of the canal. Her top was pulled up and her tights and underwear were pulled down to her knees.
Government Pathologist Dr Vivekanand Bridgemohan in his evidence-in-chief cited the cause of death as asphyxia and drowning along with multiple injuries. The autopsy indicated that Panday was struck with a blunt object, which left a large bruise by one of her temples. Her eyes were also swollen, while there was a bruise on one of her hips and other bruises on her privates. In addition, there was muddy water in her stomach and a foreign object in her wind-pipe. There was also evidence of sexual assault.
Police detained the 16-year-old boy and he was eventually charged with murder.
During his two-week trial, which began in October 2011, the accused, in an unsworn statement, denied seeing either the victim Kavita Panday or her mother Claudette David, on September 8, 2008 when the teen was slain.
The trial judge, accompanied by the lawyers and jury, revisited the area where the body was found.
At the scene, Claudette David identified her home and where she was when she had allegedly seen her daughter in company of the accused.
Eventually, after deliberating for two hours, the mixed Berbice Assizes jury found the accused not guilty.
The case remains unsolved and forgotten…
Or is it…?
In late July 2012, Basmattie Moonsammy, also called ‘Manda,’ a student of Woodley Park Primary, disappeared from her parents’ Woodley Park, West Berbice home, which is also a section of Bath Settlement. When days passed and she failed to return, her mother, Padmoutie ‘Padma’ Dyal, a domestic worker, visited the Fort Wellington Police Station and reported her missing.
It was not the first time that the troubled teen had disappeared. She was a frequent runaway, but would always return a few days later.
On the morning of Saturday, August 4, 2012, Maniram Jainauth, a Woodley Park farmer, was working in his rice field around 10.30 hrs when he saw something partially buried in the mud.
On checking closer, Jainauth realised that the ‘something’ was a corpse, buried in a shallow grave but unearthed by recent heavy rains.
The farmer instructed his wife to contact the police. Detectives removed the soil and discerned that the victim was a young female. The victim was lying face-down. She was wearing a shirt and brassiere; her underwear was pulled down to the knees, a length of cloth was knotted around her throat.
Checking into the teen’s background, detectives were told that Basmattie shared a relationship with a 20-year-old man who lived at Bath Settlement. They also learnt that less than a year before Basmattie’s murder, the same youth had been acquitted of the murder of another teenage girl. That victim was Kavita Panday.
A few days after Basmattie’s body was found, police visited the suspect’s Bath Settlement home and took him into custody for the teen’s murder. Two other youths were also detained.
The suspect’s parents, meanwhile, vouched deeply for his innocence, and even filed a report at the Complaints Desk in New Amsterdam’s Central Police Station, into claims that he was assaulted.
The parents denied that the suspect and Moonsammy shared a relationship, while painting an unflattering picture of the slain girl.
“A murder story happened four years ago and that story done— and just so they came and arrested my son… just so they come and arrested him,” the father said. “So anything happening now, they coming and hold him,” the father had told Kaieteur News.
According to the parents, their son was at home the entire week that Basmattie had disappeared. A few days later, police were forced to release the young fisherman and the other two suspects.
The investigation into the murder of Basmattie Moonsammy, the troubled teen who often ran away from home, is now apparently at a standstill. Or is it…?

If you have further information on these cases or any other, please contact us at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown office or by telephone. We can be reached on telephone numbers 22-58458, 22-58465, or 22-58491. You need not disclose your identity.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email address: [email protected]