A friend of mur­dered moth­er Neisha Cyleane Sankar-Ram­sun­dar wants her death to serve as a les­son to oth­er young women, to un­der­stand that true love does not in­clude vi­o­lence or con­trol.

Mourn­ers turned out in the num­bers yes­ter­day to bid farewell to the moth­er of one at the Siparia Pen­te­costal Church. Twen­ty-nine-year-old Sankar-Ram­sun­dar was chopped to death by her hus­band at their home on Mon­day.

Re­call­ing in the eu­lo­gy how at Form Four Sankar-Ram­sun­dar’s life took a de­tour when she dropped out of school be­cause she thought she found love, De­bra Pierre said that did not stop her from pur­su­ing her stud­ies.

Demon­strat­ing per­se­ver­ance and re­silience, she said Sankar-Ram­sun­dar pur­sued her CSEC stud­ies pri­vate­ly, at­tain­ing a full cer­tifi­cate and con­tin­ued her ed­u­ca­tion­al goals.

She be­gan work­ing as an on the job trainee at the  Siparia Sec­ondary and then at Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd.

At age 20 she had her son, got mar­ried and had planned to com­plete and fur­nish her home. 

Pierre de­scribed her as a hard-work­ing and re­spon­si­ble per­son and a lov­ing moth­er, as she re­count­ed that Sankar-Ram­sun­dar’s had a pas­sion for life.

Pierre said her friend’s mur­der should serve as a les­son to oth­er young women.

“Like every­one else Neisha was hu­man and made mis­takes. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, one par­tic­u­lar mis­take ul­ti­mate­ly led to us be­ing here to­day. Neisha’s mis­take was not to iden­ti­fy what true love re­al­ly was. How many young women have fall­en in­to this trap? The at­trac­tion that comes with our first love can eas­i­ly de­ceive us in­to think­ing that its true love. If we have not yet at­tained ma­tu­ri­ty of dis­cern­ment. She was young, im­pres­sion­able and trust­wor­thy of an old­er man. True love is nev­er vi­o­lent, it nev­er harms, it nev­er de­stroys.”

She al­so ap­pealed to par­ents to teach their chil­dren what re­al love is. “Talk to your daugh­ters about con­trol­ling men, and teach your sons how to con­trol their anger and how to pos­i­tive­ly let go. Let us all re­mem­ber Neisha’s life lessons.”

Re­pub­lic Bank Siparia branch man­ag­er Mukesh Har­rikissoon re­flect­ed on Neisha’s work life.

“She im­pressed us as a great, charis­mat­ic leader. She was a con­fi­dent young la­dy, com­mit­ted to her tasks and un­der­tak­ings. She car­ried a pow­er­ful stature that stood out wher­ev­er she went. A com­mand­ing voice, yet soft and gen­tle a dili­gent and ded­i­cat­ed em­ploy­ee al­ways punc­tu­al.”

An em­ploy­ee of the bank since 2011, Har­rikissoon said Sankar-Ram­sun­dar cus­tomer ser­vice of­fi­cer warmed the hearts of cus­tomers.

For­mer Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona was al­so one of the many who would have in­ter­act­ed with her at the bank on many oc­ca­sions. He paid his re­spects at the fu­ner­al.

The ser­vice was fol­lowed by a bur­ial at the Siparia Pub­lic Ceme­tery. Sankar-Ram­sun­dar was chopped to death by her hus­band Har­richa­ran Ram­sun­dar, 45, while their son slept in an­oth­er room. He was found dead hours lat­er and laid to rest on Thurs­day.