JUSTICE Navindra Singh, yesterday, sentenced 65-year-old Ajodha Persaud, called ‘Amica’, to 60 years in jail for stabbing to death his nephew, Chaitram Gooroodiyal, on October 2, 2009 following an argument over the selling of a property. The judge imposed on the convict what is believed in some quarters to be a relatively reasonable penalty, considering that he could have chosen to impose the death sentence. Since commission of the offence, the accused man has suffered a stroke and a broken leg after a fall, hence he has been attending court in an armchair, and has been allowed to sit outside of the dock.

The mixed Demerara Assizes jury had earlier taken less than one hour to return with the unanimous verdict that the convict was guilty of murder.

The convict took the sentence calmly.

Asked earlier whether he had anything to say as to why sentence should not be passed on him, the convict had answered in the negative.

A man’s life span is seventy years. Whether ‘Amica’, now 65, will live another 60 years is anybody’s guess.

At resumption of the trial yesterday morning, Justice Singh began his summation of the evidence to the jury.

In an unsworn statement which he had opted to make, the accused had told the court that, on October 2, 2009, he was peeling an apple in front of his door when he and his nephew began to argue. He said his nephew slapped him twice and went away, and was returning to slap him again when the nephew walked into a knife which he was holding.
But Prosecutor Rhondel Weever, who was associated with State Counsel Renita Singh, said the accused had told the police a different story. She said he had admitted to the police that he had stabbed the victim in the stomach.

Two eyewitnesses
Two eyewitnesses related to both the accused and deceased claimed they had seen Persaud stab his nephew after threatening to so do. The prosecutor said the disagreement arose when the accused, who had planned to sell a property, was informed by his nephew that he could not do so without consent from the nephew’s mother.
Defence Counsel Peter Hugh had urged the jurors to give Persaud the benefit of the doubt on the ground that the killing could have been accidental or in self-defence; but Prosecutor Weever had submitted that self-defence and provocation were out of the question as far as the evidence was concerned, and she had concluded her address by stating: “Who the cap fits, let him wear it.”

Regardless of whether “the cap fits the accused”, he has been sentenced to 60 years’ imprisonment, and has been escorted to prison to begin his sentence.