RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

“I feel re­lief.” Those were the words of An­drew Per­sad af­ter learn­ing that the man who mur­dered his 15-year-old autis­tic daugh­ter, Ma­li­ni Per­sad, had tak­en his own life in a po­lice cell.

Ma­li­ni’s de­com­pos­ing body was dis­cov­ered in a bushy area in Bar­rack­pore on Thurs­day. The man re­spon­si­ble, 52-year-old Vin­od Avinash Kothai, con­fessed to the killing while in po­lice cus­tody.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said af­ter con­fess­ing, he stripped his T-shirt and used it to cre­ate a noose to hang him­self.

Around 8:05 am yes­ter­day, Cor­po­ral Seeth vis­it­ed cell #1 at the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion and saw Kothai hang­ing by the neck from a piece of fab­ric. Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Daniel de­clared him dead.

Speak­ing at his home on Rochard Dou­glas Road, Ma­li­ni’s fa­ther, Per­sad, said he felt both sor­row and re­lief. He al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over pub­lic com­ments blam­ing his fam­i­ly for Ma­li­ni’s death.

“She nev­er missed a doc­tor’s ap­point­ment. She was autis­tic but very bril­liant, and I was there look­ing for her from day one,” he said.

Per­sad re­vealed that CCTV footage showed Ma­li­ni walk­ing with Kothai in­to Mus­sarap Trace. When po­lice re­viewed the footage and vis­it­ed the sus­pect’s home, he de­nied she was there. Kothai told po­lice he saw Ma­li­ni walk­ing and bought her an aloo pie. He said he gave her $20 and then dropped her back out on the road. How­ev­er, there was no CCTV footage to show this.

Per­sad told Guardian Me­dia that Ma­li­ni was not one to run away, even though CCTV footage cap­tured her leav­ing their home with sev­er­al bags on last week Sun­day morn­ing. Per­sad said he did not know Kothai and had no idea how his daugh­ter be­came ac­quaint­ed with him.

“Be­cause of be­ing autis­tic, she had a way of get­ting an­gry quick­ly, but we knew how to han­dle it. There was no ar­gu­ment with any­one. It was the first time she left home,” he ex­plained.

Per­sad said Ma­li­ni used his phone the day be­fore she dis­ap­peared, but he found no com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween her and the sus­pect.

While the com­mu­ni­ty ral­lied around the fam­i­ly and pro­vid­ed use­ful in­for­ma­tion—in­clud­ing that Ma­li­ni had been seen in a ham­mock at the sus­pect’s home—Per­sad said the po­lice did not act swift­ly.

He cred­it­ed the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team, led by Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat, for con­duct­ing a search on Tues­day that led to the dis­cov­ery of hu­man re­mains on Thurs­day.

The body was found in a forest­ed area near KPA Trace, off GP Road, along­side a rope, a pair of pants, a blouse, a hair tie, and a pair of blue slip­pers. Po­lice said cir­cling cor­beaux led searchers to the lo­ca­tion.

Kothai, who lived at Mus­sarap Trace, had pre­vi­ous­ly been ac­cused of bes­tial­i­ty in­volv­ing a cow.

Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (Re­gion Three), the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, and the Crime Scene Unit are in­ves­ti­gat­ing both deaths.