An­na-Lisa Paul

Rel­a­tives of mur­der vic­tim Ash­ma Naimool are prais­ing of­fi­cers of the TTPS’ Cold Case Unit (CCU) for solv­ing her mur­der.

Cry­ing as she com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers for their un­wa­ver­ing sup­port and hard work to solve the case, a mem­ber of Naimool’s fam­i­ly cried as she said, “When we lost our faith...they gave it back to us.”

Naimool, who was 32 at the time of her dis­ap­pear­ance, was last seen leav­ing her Tacarigua home with a male friend on June 3, 2015. How­ev­er, the beau­ti­cian nev­er re­turned home.

Al­though a miss­ing per­son’s re­port was filed at the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion the next day, Naimool was nev­er found nor was her body ever lo­cat­ed.

Ra­jen­dra Ram­paul, 38, of Plum Mi­tan Junc­tion, Biche, ap­peared be­fore Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate Mau­reen Ba­boolal-Gafoor charged with her mur­der on Mon­day. He was re­mand­ed in cus­tody and will reap­pear on De­cem­ber 19.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Naimool’s fam­i­ly on Tues­day evening, they re­quest­ed some time to in­ter­nalise the lat­est de­vel­op­ments.

How­ev­er, a fe­male rel­a­tive who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty ex­plained, “To­day (Tues­day) is a very aus­pi­cious and emo­tion­al day for all of us…this was sev­en years ago.”

She said they were grate­ful for the ef­fort of the of­fi­cers.

“Hats off to the CCU. They did what they said they would do and this team was an ex­tra­or­di­nary team. It was well in­struct­ed. They were well dis­ci­plined. They were very thor­ough, and I pray for them. I pray that they ex­cel in every­thing else that they in­tend to do for the rest of their lives.”

She added, “They were more like peo­ple and not like of­fi­cers…so we thank them for their pa­tience, their loy­al­ty, their un­der­stand­ing…and the pub­lic who as­sist­ed all the units in­volved in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

The woman de­scribed the CCU team head­ed by Sgt Shel­don Nar­ine as “young, fresh and ma­ture.”

“I am not a per­son who has much faith in young peo­ple, but I was blown away by their ma­tu­ri­ty, the way they han­dled us, the way they were pa­tient, the way they were kind, the way they were un­der­stand­ing…it was more than just be­ing of­fi­cers, they were hu­man be­ings.”

Al­so com­mend­ing the CCU and HBI of­fi­cers was act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob, who said, “I am con­fi­dent that a for­mer trick­le will turn in­to a steady flow of solved mur­ders, as we con­tin­ue to in­vest in train­ing and de­vel­op­ment, there­by build­ing a cadre of tech­ni­cal­ly com­pe­tent de­tec­tives, who will be as­sist­ed by us­ing sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach­es and tech­nol­o­gy to solve homi­cides.”

The clo­sure of the case brought to 19 the num­ber of mur­ders so far solved by of­fi­cers of the CCU and the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (HBI). The TTPS said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 peo­ple have been charged with mur­der since Oc­to­ber 16.