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Two weeks after her daughter shot her prisons officer husband Robert Seecharan dead, Sherry-Ann Seecharan took her own life by ingesting a poisonous substance at her sister’s home in Barrackpore. Her mother Samdaye Rangoo is now blaming her death on the failure of police to provide counselling for Sherry-Ann, 36, and her children following the tragic events they endured.
Yesterday marked two weeks since Robert was shot by Mohini Ganase, 16, as he was severely beating Sherry-Ann, after also attacking Mohini, along the Penal Rock Road, Barrackpore. “I was calling and asking the Barrackpore police right through for somebody to come and talk to them and give them some counselling,” a distraught Rangoo told the T&T Guardian.
“Nobody take me on and look at what happen now, my daughter dead.” Around 10 am yesterday, even as Robert’s family was conducting the “bandara” or the final prayer ceremony for him at their Barrackpore home, Sherry-Ann was said to have been telling her sister what to do with her body once she too was dead. However, her sister did not expect what was to happen next.
“She went upstairs, bathe and come back but it look like she had already taken the poison,” Rangoo explained tearfully. “She was sitting on the couch and she tell Elizabeth that she wants her funeral done from here and she wants her body taken to a crematorium. “Elizabeth didn’t know why she was talking like that but is only when she start to froth up she realise that Sherry-Ann drink poison,” she added.
Rangoo, 62, said she was in Siparia when she received a phone call from a frantic Elizabeth, asking her to come to her home. “I paid a taxi to drop me straight here. When I reached she was still alive. She was frothing from her mouth and I wiped it a few times but she couldn’t talk and was only blinking her eyes.”
Sherry-Ann’s four children live with their father in Kanhai Road, Barrackpore, and were not at Elizabeth’s home when their mother ingested the poison. Rangoo wept as she recalled how Sherry-Ann and Elizabeth had bonded following Robert’s death. Elizabeth’s husband, Clyde Johnson, was killed by a trap gun set in his garden on July 15.
“Two of them lost their husbands and they had come together to make it through. We never expected Sherry-Ann to do this even though she was very sad over Robert,” she added. Rangoo said Sherry-Ann celebrated her 36th birthday last Thursday and despite the family arranging a simple prayer meeting, she became upset and cried.
Rangoo said the family tried to comfort her and abandoned the cake-cutting, eventually getting her to rejoin them.
Spouse’s family still hurting
The T&T Guardian visited the Barrackpore home of Robert Seecharan yesterday, where his relatives had only just completed the “bandara” or final prayer ceremony on his behalf. His sister, Ria Seecharan, said the family learned of Sherry-Ann’s death halfway through the ceremony. She showed the empty rooms Robert and Sherry-Ann occupied, saying everything that Sherry-Ann requested from the rooms after her brother’s death was given to her.
“She came with a list of things that she wanted from the rooms. Everything that was here she took it.” During a press conference on August 2, after she and her mother were released from custody without being charged, Mohini Ganase told the media she came to her mother’s defence after Seecharan attacked both of them as they were returning from an outing at Quinam Beach.
She said Seecharan, after turning on her, had began beating her mother and threatening to kill her with his licensed gun. Ganase said she fought to take the 9mm pistol away from Seecharan, who had ten years service, eventually succeeded and pulled the trigger.
