Shas­tri Boodan

GML Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

An ar­rest is ex­pect­ed soon in con­nec­tion with the sus­pect­ed ar­son at­tack that left a Cunu­pia moth­er and her three chil­dren home­less, ac­cord­ing to Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Bhag­wan­deen of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Supt Bhag­wan­deen said in­ves­ti­ga­tors were at an ad­vanced stage in their en­quiries and an ar­rest was im­mi­nent in re­la­tion to Tues­day’s fire at Madras Road, Cunu­pia.

The de­vel­op­ment comes as 39-year-old Can­dice Go­sine said she and her chil­dren, aged 11, eight and four, re­main in hid­ing, fear­ing for their safe­ty, af­ter the blaze de­stroyed their home.

“I am still liv­ing in fear,” Go­sine said yes­ter­day, adding that she re­mains deeply con­cerned about the safe­ty of her chil­dren.

Go­sine said she re­ceived a tele­phone call from of­fi­cers at­tached to the Las Lo­mas Po­lice Post en­quir­ing about her wel­fare fol­low­ing the fire.

She said Of­fi­cer Ram­s­ingh con­tact­ed her to ask how she and her chil­dren were cop­ing in the af­ter­math of the in­ci­dent.

De­spite the call, Go­sine said she is con­sid­er­ing mak­ing a re­port to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty, over what she de­scribed as the po­lice’s fail­ure to act on sev­er­al pre­vi­ous re­ports she made against the sus­pect.

The sus­pect is a male rel­a­tive who lives in Cunu­pia. Go­sine al­leged that he had been threat­en­ing her and her fam­i­ly for months fol­low­ing the end of their re­la­tion­ship.

She told Guardian Me­dia that she re­peat­ed­ly re­port­ed the threats to of­fi­cers at both the Cunu­pia and Las Lo­mas Po­lice Sta­tions, pro­vid­ing screen­shots of threat­en­ing mes­sages and records of tele­phone calls.

Go­sine fur­ther al­leged that about three weeks be­fore the fire, the man en­tered her prop­er­ty, held a knife to her throat and as­sault­ed her.

Fol­low­ing that in­ci­dent, she ob­tained a med­ical re­port and was grant­ed a pro­tec­tion or­der.

Tues­day’s fire de­stroyed al­most every­thing in­side the fam­i­ly’s con­crete home, in­clud­ing fur­ni­ture, cloth­ing, ap­pli­ances and oth­er per­son­al be­long­ings, leav­ing the fam­i­ly with lit­tle more than the clothes they were wear­ing.

A per­ma­nent res­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, Go­sine said her three chil­dren are US cit­i­zens. She con­tin­ues to ap­peal for pub­lic as­sis­tance as she tries to re­build her fam­i­ly’s life.

She said the chil­dren’s fa­ther con­tact­ed her on Wednes­day af­ter learn­ing about the fire. Al­though the two are es­tranged, she said he reached out to of­fer sup­port fol­low­ing the or­deal.

Go­sine is ap­peal­ing to the au­thor­i­ties for tem­po­rary ac­com­mo­da­tion, food, cloth­ing, ap­pli­ances, house­hold items and build­ing ma­te­ri­als to help her fam­i­ly re­cov­er from the dev­as­tat­ing loss.