THE Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) yesterday recommended that the police lay charges against Deoram Sookchand for the capital offence of murder committed on his wife, 56-year-old Pamela Kendall.The evidence against Sookchand is reportedly overwhelming.

Sookchand appeared yesterday before Magistrate Ann McLennan to face the charge of murdering Kendall. The facts of the matter were not presented in court, but the case was adjourned until September 14, 2015.

The Guyana Chronicle was informed that the DPP advised that charges be laid against Sookchand after the file was sent to her detailing the steps of the investigations, and the statements which were taken from several persons, including Sookchand himself.

It was noted in the file that the tests for gunpowder residue which the police carried out on Sookchand’s hands suggested he had handled a gun on the night of the shooting. And given that his statement to the police on the matter was riddled with inconsistences, the DPP ordered that charges be laid against him.

Investigations into the murder of Pamela Kendall took an interesting turn earlier this week when the police arrested her husband as they continued their probe into the woman’s death.

The man had earlier provided this newspaper with an interview detailing what reportedly took place on the night of Kendall’s death. That interview, however, proved that the man was not consistent in several things that he was saying regarding the incident.

He was very vocal in calling on the police to find and arrest the killers of his wife, even as he lamented that the police had always failed to capture the perpetrators of crime in the area.

Police sources told this publication that when crime scene investigators revisited the scene of the crime, they discovered that the things the man was saying to them were meant to throw them off track in their investigation and to cover up his actions.

The man also failed to tell the police during the earlier stages of the investigation that he had been deported to Guyana after serving time for drugs and violent crimes overseas.
Initially also, the relatives of the woman, including her brothers, were not too happy when the police arrested the man, as they had thought he was innocent of the dastardly act of murder against the woman with whom he had been sharing a common-law relationship for approximately nine years.

He had also told this newspaper that he felt very badly that, after the shooting death of his wife, the police questioned him in a way that caused him to feel as if he were the woman’s killer.

It is unclear how the two sides of the family are dealing with the matter now that the man has been charged for the murder.
The day after the woman was killed, there was a protest in the village as residents called for the resignation of Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan. That protest however had a short life span, as residents quickly abandoned it. There were also reports in sections of the society that the protest was politically motivated.

By Leroy Smith