DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 36-year-old met­al fab­ri­ca­tor from Ch­agua­nas, who ad­mit­ted to killing a prison of­fi­cer dur­ing a dis­pute in 2016, is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased from prison in less than a year.

Kameel Seep­er­sad was ini­tial­ly charged with mur­der­ing Rishi Sankar but was re­cent­ly al­lowed to plead guilty to the less­er of­fence of manslaugh­ter by provo­ca­tion based on a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, ne­go­ti­at­ed by his lawyers Ja­son Jack­son and Krysan Ram­bert.

While Seep­er­sad was yes­ter­day sen­tenced to 10 years in prison for the crime by High Court Judge Nali­ni Singh, he is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased much soon­er as the time he spent on re­mand was de­duct­ed from his sen­tence.

Seep­er­sad, a fa­ther of two who spent four years as a pri­vate in the Unit­ed States Army, was ac­cused of killing Sankar in June 2016.

He was ar­rest­ed late that month af­ter Sankar was re­port­ed miss­ing and he (Seep­er­sad) was found to be dri­ving his sta­tion wag­on.

Af­ter spend­ing a few days in cus­tody, Seep­er­sad con­fessed to killing Sankar.

He claimed that Sankar lived near his broth­er and would con­stant­ly taunt him (Seep­er­sad) by claim­ing that he (Sankar) had sex with his (Seep­er­sad) girl­friend.

Seep­er­sad claimed that Sankar re­peat­ed his taunts and at­tacked him with a piece of wood be­fore he re­tal­i­at­ed.

He claimed that he drew a cut­lass and chopped Sankar sev­er­al times. He then wrapped Sankar’s body in a sheet of poly­thene and drove to Man­zanil­la where he dumped his body, the cut­lass and his blood-stained cloth­ing, off a bridge over a riv­er.

Al­though he took in­ves­ti­ga­tors to the lo­ca­tion, Sankar’s body was even­tu­al­ly found by hunters at an­oth­er lo­ca­tion in Pi­paro.

Sankar’s body was in an ad­vanced stage of de­com­po­si­tion and ap­peared to have been at­tacked by wild an­i­mals.

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence for Seep­er­sad, Jus­tice Singh be­gan with a start­ing point of 23 years.

The start­ing point was based on the at­tack not be­ing pre­med­i­tat­ed or pro­longed as well as based on Sankar’s role in in­sti­gat­ing it.

She then gave a five-year dis­count based on Seep­er­sad not com­mit­ting dis­ci­pli­nary of­fences while in prison and his par­tic­i­pa­tion in nu­mer­ous re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes in­clud­ing CXC class­es.

Jus­tice Singh gave a fur­ther two-year dis­count for Seep­er­sad hav­ing a clean crim­i­nal record be­fore com­mit­ting the crime af­ter she re­duced his sen­tence by a third based on his guilty plea.

“I think this meets with the over­all jus­tice in this case,” Jus­tice Singh said.

The DPP’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Shanelle Kissoon.