Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Why was 64-year-old Ram­dath “Salt” Ma­haraj tor­tured and mur­dered?

Homi­cide de­tec­tives could not an­swer this ques­tion yes­ter­day, or de­ter­mine why his legs were am­pu­tat­ed and tak­en. So bad were his wounds that Ma­haraj’s face was un­recog­nis­able. His body and head bore sev­er­al chop and stab wounds, gash­es and scratch­es. His legs were sev­ered from the knees, and his left arm was al­most sev­ered. 

The killer/s left his na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card and a bank card on his dis­fig­ured face.

Short­ly af­ter 2 pm yes­ter­day, po­lice went to a house on Quinam Road, Sen­non Vil­lage, Siparia, af­ter re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion from an anony­mous in­for­mant about a mur­der.

In­side the wood­en and con­crete house, lo­cat­ed about 175 feet in­side a track off the road, they found Ma­haraj’s mu­ti­lat­ed body ly­ing up­wards on three mat­tress­es.

He had no fixed place of abode, but over two months ago he be­gan stay­ing at the house with a male friend. Sev­er­al res­i­dents ex­pressed shock over the bru­tal killing, but they said he was not from the vil­lage and they de­clined to com­ment. In a tele­phone in­ter­view, his broth­er ex­pressed shock over the bru­tal way he was killed. 

He said Ma­haraj had been us­ing co­caine for 20 years, and about a year and a half ago, he left their home­town and was “mov­ing from place to place.” 

He said, “It come like he home­less. He leave the vil­lage and he went Siparia and just smok­ing he drugs, get­ting he NIS and just smok­ing he drugs and liv­ing from place to place, sleep­ing in aban­doned build­ings.” He said he had no idea why his broth­er was mur­dered so sav­age­ly. 

So dis­fig­ured was his broth­er’s face that he could on­ly iden­ti­fy him by his beard and chin. 

He said, “I make him out by piece of his chin be­cause his whole face mash-up, eyes buss up, nose every­thing flat­tened down. He had sev­er­al chops on his head too.”

He said his broth­er once worked as a heavy equip­ment op­er­a­tor, but he be­gan smok­ing mar­i­jua­na and then moved on to co­caine. 

Pa­lo Seco coun­cil­lor An­ton George said res­i­dents were shocked by the lev­el of bru­tal­i­ty and asked if he could as­sist by get­ting reg­u­lar pa­trols in the neigh­bour­hood.

He added, “I am sad­dened that this lev­el of bru­tal­i­ty can ex­ist amongst us. I am re­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed that in­di­vid­u­als don’t see the val­ue of a hu­man life, and I do pray and hope that the pro­tec­tive ser­vices do all that they can to ap­pre­hend those re­spon­si­ble for this act.” 

George re­called be­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty a few days ago, meet­ing with res­i­dents, and “every­thing was nice and peace­ful.”

Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion 3 of­fi­cers are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.