Bury me in a shallow grave

Dec 10, 2017 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

By Michael Jordan
Had the killers buried her a few feet deeper, it is quite likely that Basmattie Moonsammy would never have been found. She would have just vanished like so many others before her; written off as just another troubled, runaway teen.
But then it rained that August, and the downpour led police to discovery of the body, and the young men suspected of killing her. But did they?
In late July 2012, Basmattie Moonsammy, also called ‘Manda,’ a student of Woodley Park Primary, disappeared from her parents’ Woodley Park Village, West Berbice home. When days passed and she failed to return, her mother, Padmoutie ‘Padma’ Dyall, 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 13-year-old Kavita Panday, a second form student, whose body was fished out of a trench aback of Block ‘D’ Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice, on Monday, September 8, 2008. The area around her left eye was black and blue and there was a mark on her left side. Her tights, underwear and the skirt she was wearing were at her knees. Forensic evidence suggested that the victim was still alive when she was submerged in the trench.
The accused was only 16 when he was charged. He was acquitted in October 2011.
A few days after Basmattie’s body was found, police visited the suspect’s Bath Settlement home and took him into custody for Basmattie’s murder. Two other youths were also detained.
The main 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 on Sunday,” the father had 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. Investigations into the murder of Basmattie Moonsammy, the troubled teen who often ran away from home, have been at a standstill for years.

If you have further information on this case or any other, please contact us at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown office or by telephone. We can be also 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]

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Bury me in a shallow grave

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