KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter a week’s sus­pen­sion, Videsh Dookran was look­ing for­ward to re­turn­ing to the Ste Madeleine Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day.

In­stead, his moth­er, De­vi­ka See­baran, was iden­ti­fy­ing his body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James, af­ter some­one shot him in his chest on Sat­ur­day.

Up to yes­ter­day evening, Homi­cide de­tec­tives had not de­tained any­one for mur­der­ing the 15-year-old Gol­con­da teen as they await­ed the re­sult of an au­top­sy lat­er this week.

On Sun­day, Ste Madeleine po­lice got in­for­ma­tion that Videsh was in the com­pa­ny of four boys around 3 pm Sat­ur­day when an al­ter­ca­tion broke out and one of them shot him in the chest. The killer got help to take the body to an out­door bath­room at the back of Clas­sic Pluck Shop along Cipero Road, Gol­con­da, where they left him.

PC Bal­go­b­in and PC Mat­loo re­spond­ed to the in­for­ma­tion and found Videsh un­re­spon­sive and ly­ing in a foetal po­si­tion in the blue wood­en struc­ture. ASP Per­sad, In­sp Re­beiro and Cpl Deo led a team of Homi­cide de­tec­tives to the scene.

There was a mix­ture of sad­ness and con­fu­sion in the Gol­con­da com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day, with the pain of los­ing a child to vi­o­lence vis­i­ble on many faces. Videsh’s grand­moth­er Sal­isha See­baran strug­gled to fight back her tears, re­call­ing that she had not seen her grand­son as was sick for some days.

Al­though the po­lice iden­ti­fied per­sons of in­ter­est in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, See­baran and oth­ers found it dif­fi­cult to be­lieve they were in­volved in Videsh’s death. She said they were friends who all hung out un­der her home.

See­baran re­called that she was just about to take a bath on Sun­day morn­ing when she saw the neigh­bours gath­ered on the road. As they spot­ted her, one of them brought the news of the mur­der. See­baran said she cried out and lat­er walked across to Videsh’s home, where she em­braced De­vi­ka, who sat on a chair out­side.

“I said: ‘Sha­la. How did this hap­pen?’ She said: ‘Mam­my, he was mak­ing a cook over the road by his cousins. When he made the cook, he told them he was go­ing down the road. They told him to car­ry some food for Mongy, his cousin’s daugh­ter. The boy told him to buy a Coke and bring it back, but he was not com­ing back,’” See­baran ex­plained.

Be­fore leav­ing home, Videsh told De­vi­ka he was go­ing to lime with his cousin George and he and the oth­ers would go hunt­ing lat­er. How­ev­er, he did not re­turn home and when De­vi­ka got up around 1 am Sun­day, he was not in bed. An hour lat­er, po­lice came to the house in­quir­ing about Videsh and showed De­vi­ka a pho­to­graph.

See­baran said her grand­son was not a trou­ble­some child.

“He nev­er used to in­ter­fere with no­body. He used to go out the road straight and come back. This morn­ing (yes­ter­day) he was sup­posed to go to school back to school. The boy said he want­ed to back to school to learn and get his ed­u­ca­tion to get a good work.”

Curt See­baran, an­oth­er cousin, said Videsh and the boys in ques­tion were lim­ing un­der See­baran’s house on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day fol­low­ing news of the mur­der.

“All of us were talk­ing, and I asked them if they had any in­for­ma­tion, but what they were say­ing was they did not know... They were shocked too, that out of every­body, it was their part­ner who they were lim­ing with, be­cause if they asked Videsh to go down the road and buy a lit­tle roti for them, he would al­ways buy it for them,” Curt said.

He said he last saw Videsh on Sat­ur­day evening when he dropped off food for a cousin. They spoke about a watch Videsh wore be­fore the teen said he was go­ing up the road. Curt said he went to Videsh’s home lat­er and no­ticed he was not there but as­sumed he was with friends and would re­turn lat­er.

Al­though the school sus­pend­ed Videsh for fight­ing, Curt does not be­lieve it had any­thing to do with his mur­der. How­ev­er, he said there was an in­ci­dent a month ago and some­one threat­ened Videsh. How­ev­er, he thought the mat­ter was over.

“To tell you the truth, the on­ly thing I heard was that there was an al­ter­ca­tion with some oth­er lit­tle boys with some phone prob­lems. That was the last thing we heard. I heard they had threat­ened to beat him and thing.”

An­oth­er rel­a­tive said peo­ple saw men beat­ing up Videsh and con­tact­ed the po­lice, but by the time of­fi­cers ar­rived no one was there. How­ev­er, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said they did not re­ceive any in­for­ma­tion about this.

Min­is­ters of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly and Lisa Mor­ris-Julien ex­tend­ed their con­do­lences to Videsh’s fam­i­ly yes­ter­day.