WITH a broad smile on his face, and arm in arm with his mother, 21-year-old Avinesh Singh yesterday walked out of the Leonora Magistrate’s Court, a free man following three years on remand as a murder accused.Singh was just 18 years old when he was arrested and charged with the beating to death of housewife Margaret Singh.

Magistrate Rushelle Liverpool yesterday handed down her decision, after sufficient evidence could not be found to link Singh to the murder.

From the time Singh was arrested, he was represented by Attorney-at-law Wanda Samantha Fortune of the Guyana Legal Aid Clinic.
Particulars of the charge detailed that on January 4, 2013, at Orangestein, East Bank Essequibo (EBE), Avinesh Singh murdered housewife Margaret Singh. Avinesh Singh was reportedly arrested on January 12, 2013, and had not been required to plead to the indictable offence when he initially appeared before Magistrate Sherdell Isaacs at Vreed-en-Hoop Court on January 16, 2013.

Singh, whose addresses were given as Greenwich Park, EBE, and Soesdyke, East Bank Demerara, was accused of murdering the woman, to whom he is unrelated, in her Orangestein, EBE home.

A Preliminary Inquiry (PI) which saw some 13 witnesses testifying had commenced since March 2015. A confession statement had, on an earlier occasion, been ruled inadmissible by the magistrate because it was not deemed freely and voluntarily given.

Reports are that Singh had to be taken for medical treatment at a hospital, although police officers denied ever beating him while he was in custody.

Meanwhile, the deceased was attacked in her home and beaten with an iron bar to the head. She subsequently died in hospital on January 4, 2013. Her grandchild whom she was caring at the time of the attack was also beaten. The child was discharged from hospital one week after the attack, but the woman remained a patient in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital until she succumbed.

Some $30,000 cash and two cellphones were reportedly stolen from the home. The bandit had also ransacked the house.