Bailer of witness who changed story warned
MAGISTRATE Adela Nagamootoo has ordered that a notice be sent to the bailer of 75-year-old Budhia, who has failed to attend New Amsterdam Court in answer to a charge of attempting to defeat the course of justice.
It means that the security lodged for the pre-trial liberty of the septuagenarian can be escheated if the woman, in whose house schoolgirl Roshni Pertabsingh was murdered in bed on June 7, 2006, at Plantation Warren, Corentyne, also in Berbice, absents herself from her trial in future.
Following the murder, Seenarine Ramnarine, was charged with the capital offence and the preliminary inquiry (PI) is continuing on July 12.
Police charged the pensioner, on advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), after the expected star witness changed her story about what happened while the teen was her sleeping companion and she was on $15,000 bail.
Pertabsingh, 16, at the time and writing the Caribbean Secondary Certificate Examination (CSEC), had been keeping the company of the old woman at nights, as her  husband lives in the United States for six months a year.
On the fateful night, neighbours heard shouts from the house and, on hurrying to the scene, saw the victim on a bed with her throat slashed. Her underwear had been pulled down to her ankles and there were cuts about her private parts.
A post mortem examination, performed by Government Pathologist Dr. Nehaul Singh, revealed that death was due to asphyxiation and a severed trachea (in the throat).