THE 21-year-old butcher from Corriverton, East Berbice who is alleged to have strangled a cattle farmer after refusing to pay the elderly man the $220,000 he had owed him, and then burying the man’s body in a shallow grave at Lot 34 Kingston Corriverton, Corentyne, was remanded to the New Amsterdam Prison by Springlands Magistrate Rabindranauth Singh.
Asif Hamid was not required to plea to the charge of murder under the Common Law. He is expected to return to court on August 25.
Particulars of the offence are that, between July 27 and 30, 2015, at Lot 34 Kingston, Corriverton, Corentyne, he murdered Henry Lalman, called Benimal.
A subsequent post-mortem report revealed that Benimal’s death was due to manual strangulation. Government Pathologist Dr Vivikanand Brijmohan concluded that the cause of Benimal’s death was due to the hyoid bone being broken. The hyoid bone (lingual bone) is a horseshoe-shaped bone situated in the anterior midline of the neck between the chin and the thyroid cartilage.
The body of the 76-year-old cattle farmer was discovered in a shallow grave on July 30, some two days after he had left his home to collect $220,000 from the butcher.
Henry Lalman had been in the cattle rearing business for several years, and it was customary for him to sell his cattle to butchers along the Upper Corentyne district.
On July 27 last, having sold three cows, he left his Number 36 Village home just after 07:00 hrs to collect the money from a butcher at the Corriverton Market.
Initially, he had stopped at the butcher’s home, but was informed that the young butcher was at the market. Having proceeded to the market, the butcher informed the cattle farmer that the money was at home. But when they got there, the suspect told the farmer that he had no money.
When Lalman threatened to tell the butcher’s father, the butcher became enraged and vised the elderly man who, having lost consciousness, was placed in a shallow grave measuring six by three feet, and he covered the grave with a zinc sheet.
The son of the deceased, Ravendra Lalman, called Ravi, became worried after he failed to make contact with his father. Being aware of his father’s business plan, he visited the home of the suspect’s father, who, after questioning his son, said they were unaware of the whereabouts of the elderly man. As a result, Ravi made a missing person report at the Number 51 Police Station.
However, following a tip-off, the police went to the suspect’s house, where they exhumed the remains of the cattle farmer from a three-foot-deep grave.
By Jeune Vankeric
