Members of a Cornelia Ida, West Coast Demerara, family are shedding tears  following the unexplained arrest of three members of the household by the police at the weekend.
Abdool Rasheed and his wife, Nazaleen, also called ‘Pam’, related to the Guyana Chronicle that between Saturday and Sunday last, the police swooped down on the home of their daughter Shelliza, who lives just across the road from them, ransacked her home and arrested her, along with her reputed husband, Delon Jacobs, and her 15- year-old daughter, Fara.
The family said that, as far as they know, the persons arrested have not been charged, have not been placed on bail, neither are they being released. Though they are all from the same household,  Shelliza, 30, is at the Den Amstel Police Station, her daughter is at Leonora Police Station, and Jacobs is being held at the Parika Police Station.
Meanwhile, the tearful grandmother lamented that the situation is further aggravated since Shelliza, a mother of six, has a five-month old baby who is still nursing.
She explained that they are not financially ‘well off’, and the baby, accustomed to his mother’s milk, has been refusing whatever substitute they can manage to give him, and so has been irritable, and crying for well into three days now.
The Rasheed family recalled that on Saturday, Jacobs, who is a carpenter and scrap metal dealer, was at home all day until around 14:00 hrs when he had lunch then got dressed and went out. The elderly woman, unwell, and spending most of her time in a hammock, recalled that shortly after Jacobs left the home, she received a message stating that he had been arrested by the police. They have not seen him since.
The woman recounted that around 4:30hrs the following morning, she was in her bed when she heard her daughter wailing and her grandchildren screaming.
She got up and looked out the window and saw a police vehicle and several ranks in Shelliza’s yard, and one of them was ‘brutalizing’ her daughter.
“He dragged she, then chucked her against a freezer outside the doorway”, she related.
Meanwhile, another rank dragged the 15-year-old daughter and beat her as well, claiming that he saw her ‘sleeping with some man’. The ranks ransacked literally every room in the house, then bundled the two women into their vehicle and took them away.
When the father, Abdool, could not take it any more, he stood at the window and asked the police why they were man-handling his daughter and granddaughter like that.
The family observed that no female rank accompanied the patrol crew and the two women were left at the mercy of the male ranks.
While the Rasheeds said the police did not explain to them what had led to the search and arrests, they gathered that the ranks said they were looking for weapons. They recalled that their daughter’s reputed husband has in recent times been constantly targeted by the police in that sub-division.
According to them, during last month, he was arrested for a robbery at the Anna Catherina gas station and was placed on bail.  The matter is engaging the attention of the courts.
However, the family feels that Jacob’s life is being made miserable because he has broken off  his marriage and, for about the last three years, has been living a ‘shacking up’ relationship with Shelliza, who is of another ethnicity.  They claim that word is around that he will not get peace until he ‘puts that woman down’ and goes back home to his wife.
And concerned citizens are asking just what is a 15-year-old doing in the custody of the police when she should be in school.