Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 64-year-old woman from Ch­agua­nas, con­vict­ed of or­der­ing a “hit” on her es­tranged hus­band that al­so re­sult­ed in his new love in­ter­est be­ing mur­dered, has been re­leased af­ter serv­ing a lit­tle over 28 years in prison.

High Court Judge Gail Gon­za­les or­dered the re­lease of Par­ba­tee Dass as she re-sen­tenced her for the crime on Wednes­day.

In Feb­ru­ary 1999, Dass, Amir Mo­hammed, Farayad Edoo, and Rawle Ghan­ny were con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Dass’ hus­band, Ra­j­paul Dass.

Edoo and Ghan­ny were al­so found guilty of mur­der­ing Ra­j­paul’s then-com­mon-law wife, Su­san Ram­nath.

The ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed dur­ing their tri­al stat­ed that Dass and her hus­band got mar­ried in 1983. Their re­la­tion­ship de­te­ri­o­rat­ed and they were even­tu­al­ly sep­a­rat­ed by 1994 with sev­er­al pend­ing mat­ters be­fore the court for child main­te­nance and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

Ra­j­paul and Ram­nath lived in the cou­ple’s for­mer mat­ri­mo­ni­al home, while Dass and the chil­dren she had with Ra­j­paul lived oblique­ly op­po­site.

In ear­ly 1994, Dass con­tact­ed Carl Fair­bain, a paint­ing con­trac­tor whom she would oc­ca­sion­al­ly as­sist in so­lic­it­ing cus­tomers for lawyers.

She told Fair­bain that she was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing do­mes­tic is­sues and re­quest­ed as­sis­tance in find­ing some­one to give Ra­j­paul “a se­vere cut ar­se or break some bones” or to “pos­si­bly get rid of him”.

Fair­bain then in­tro­duced Dass to Mo­hammed, Edoo and Ghan­ny.

The group held sev­er­al clan­des­tine meet­ings be­fore Ra­j­paul and Ram­nath were even­tu­al­ly killed at the home they shared on March 29, 1994.

Ra­j­paul was chopped 15 times, while Ram­nath was found to have nine chop wounds.

Fair­bain served as a state wit­ness against Dass and her co-ac­cused

In 2000, the Court of Ap­peal re­ject­ed the group’s ap­peal against their con­vic­tions.

While the ap­peal pan­el agreed that there were flaws in their tri­als, it not­ed that such was not cru­cial as the ev­i­dence against them was “of a most in­crim­i­nat­ing na­ture”.

A fi­nal ap­peal was sub­se­quent­ly dis­missed by the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

The manda­to­ry death penal­ty they re­ceived up­on con­vic­tion was even­tu­al­ly com­mut­ed to life im­pris­on­ment based on the land­mark Privy Coun­cil rul­ing in the Ja­maican case of Pratt and Mor­gan, which per­mits ex­e­cu­tions on­ly with­in five years of con­vic­tion.

Ear­li­er this year, Dass suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied for her life sen­tence to be quashed based on a re­cent le­gal prece­dent in which the Privy Coun­cil ruled that mur­der con­victs who can­not be ex­e­cut­ed should re­ceive de­fin­i­tive terms of im­pris­on­ment as op­posed to blan­ket life sen­tences.

Dass’ for­mer co-ac­cused are even­tu­al­ly ex­pect­ed to sim­i­lar­ly ben­e­fit from re-sen­tenc­ing, as will hun­dreds of oth­er mur­der ac­cused whose sen­tences have es­sen­tial­ly been com­mut­ed based on the fact that the last time the death penal­ty was car­ried out in this coun­try was in 1999.

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence for Dass, Jus­tice Gon­za­les be­gan with a start­ing point of 30 years.

While Jus­tice Gon­za­les not­ed that Dass showed no re­morse and nev­er ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for her ac­tions, she still gave a two-year dis­count based on the fact that she (Dass) par­tic­i­pat­ed in nu­mer­ous re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes dur­ing her al­most three-decade stint in prison and on­ly had one prison in­frac­tion for us­ing in­de­cent lan­guage.

“I can say that the pro­grammes she par­tic­i­pat­ed in have changed her think­ing over the years,” Jus­tice Gon­za­les said.

She or­dered Dass’ im­me­di­ate re­lease as she not­ed that she had al­ready served more than her sen­tence.

Dass was rep­re­sent­ed by Pe­ter Carter and Jonell Chang. The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) was rep­re­sent­ed by Rhea Lib­ert, Josi­ah Soo Hon, and Anan­da Gob­in.