TRINIDAD GUARDIAN – One day after schoolgirl Rehana Nandlal, 15, committed suicide, her lover, Hydar Mohammed, 52, fulfilled the suicide pact they made if their clandestine relationship should be discovered.
Details of the pact were recorded in Nandlal’s diary, now in possession of the Barrackpore Police, who are investigating her death.
Relatives of the dead teenager said, in her final entry, Nandlal wrote that the couple would make love first and then end their lives together.
On Tuesday, however, Nandlal, a Form Three student of Barrackpore East Secondary, was found dead on the steps of a church in the area.
On Wednesday, Mohammed, a safety officer at the school Nandlal attended, ended his life by drinking a weedicide at a relative’s home in Mayaro. Police said around 9.30 am on Wednesday, Mohammed, who lives at Khanhai Trace, Barrackpore, visited the relative at Oilfield Road, Union Village, Mayaro.
The relative, who was not at home at the time, told police that close to midday he was contacted by neighbours who told him Mohammed had drank a poisonous substance and they had taken him to the Mayaro District Health Facility.
Mohammed, who was married with two sons, aged 24 and 30, died shortly after. His body was transferred to the Forensic Science Centre, where an autopsy was performed yesterday.
An autopsy was also performed on Nandlal’s body.
At his Khanhai Trace, Barrackpore, home, family and friends gathered to offer support to the sons. One of his sons, who asked not to be identified, denied his father was intimately involved with the schoolgirl.
Mohammed’s brother, Farouk, said that was a rumour started by a bitter school official. Farouk said that deeply troubled his brother, who was a family man and a devout Muslim and attended a mosque regularly.
On the morning Mohammed ended his life, he was scheduled to go to Princes Town with his wife, but told her he was going close by and would return soon.
Police said earlier this week, during the conduct of their investigation into the missing schoolgirl, they also confiscated a licensed gun from Mohammed.
He was due to be buried yesterday under Muslim rites. However at the Nandlal’s Hassanali Trace, Lower Barrackpore, home, a different story was told.
Elder brother Ricky Nandlal said Rehana’s diary contained all the facts. He said she was misled by Mohammed who often counseled her and whom she saw as a father figure. Ricky added: “There is nothing to deny people from the school saying they saw them kissing already. Since January 18, 2010 this thing going on.
“I think the school should have told us something since they first suspected it. We could have stopped her before it reached to this,” he said. He claimed students at the school were aware of Rehana’s affair with Mohammed but they just kept it among themselves. Tara Nandlal, who had been taking care of the teen following the death of both parents, said her sister was never suicidal. She said she was a good girl who earned good grades and never went out without them.
She said only when she found her diary, shortly before she ran away from home, did she learn of the double life she had been living.
Meanwhile, Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh on Thursday confirmed reports Nandlal was involved in an “inappropriate relationship” with Mohammed.
Gopeesingh, who spoke at Thursday’s post-Cabinet news conference, said the matter was being investigated by the ministry and the police.