RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A 52-year-old man who con­fessed to the mur­der of 15-year-old autis­tic teenag­er Ma­li­ni Per­sad took his own life while in po­lice cus­tody, us­ing his pants to hang him­self in a cell at the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion.

A po­lice source said the sus­pect, who was de­tained on Wednes­day in con­nec­tion with the teenag­er’s dis­ap­pear­ance and death, re­port­ed­ly con­fessed to po­lice be­fore be­ing grant­ed per­mis­sion to take a bath.

Min­utes lat­er, of­fi­cers found him dead.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials have launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his sui­cide.

The source said the man was a known res­i­dent of the GP Road, Bar­rack­pore com­mu­ni­ty and had pre­vi­ous­ly been ac­cused of com­mit­ting bes­tial­i­ty with a cow. He was last seen with Ma­li­ni at a dou­bles stand on Sun­day, the day she went miss­ing. CCTV footage showed the girl walk­ing out of her home on Rochard Dou­glas Road that morn­ing, car­ry­ing bags.

She was lat­er seen with the sus­pect walk­ing in­to Mus­sarap Trace.

Ma­li­ni, a Form Two stu­dent of AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege in Bar­rack­pore, was last seen by her par­ents and old­er sis­ter around 9 am on Sun­day. She had stayed at home with oth­er rel­a­tives while her par­ents ran er­rands.

Her fa­ther, An­drew Per­sad, said the fam­i­ly be­came con­cerned when his broth­er couldn’t find her in the house. By 1:30 p.m., they be­gan search­ing the area and re­port­ed her miss­ing to po­lice around 4 p.m. The next day, a fam­i­ly friend who dri­ves a taxi re­port­ed see­ing Ma­li­ni in the com­pa­ny of a man along Mus­sarap Trace.

On Tues­day, mem­bers of the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team led by Val­lance Ramb­harat be­gan search­ing and on Thurs­day they dis­cov­ered hu­man re­mains in a forest­ed area near KPA Trace, off GP Road. The de­com­pos­ing body was found along­side a blood­ied rope, a pair of pants, a blouse, a hair tie, and a pair of blue slip­pers be­lieved to be­long to Ma­li­ni. Po­lice were led to the area by a flock of cor­beaux cir­cling above the forest­ed lo­ca­tion. DNA tests are ex­pect­ed to con­firm the iden­ti­ty of the re­mains.

Ma­li­ni had been di­ag­nosed with autism and ex­pe­ri­enced seizures.

Of­fi­cers from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (Re­gion Three), the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, and the Crime Scene Unit are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to both the mur­der and the sus­pect’s death in cus­tody.