THIRTY-SIX-year-old Councillor in Region Five (Mahaica/Berbice) Abel Seetaram was on Wednesday jailed for 18 months for felonious wounding.

Magistrate Rhondell Weaver imposed the custodial sentence on Seetaram following a probation officer’s report presented to her at Fort Wellington Magistrates’ Court.
Seetaram had been found guilty of the offence of felonious wounding on May 31 last, but sentencing had been deferred pending the presentation of a probation report. On Wednesday Magistrate Weaver noted that Seetaram had been before her in 2016 on traffic offences and then again in 2017 on summary offences and then now in 2018 on felonious wounding and he seemed to be moving from minor offences to major offences.
“I have taken all the facts into consideration and given your recent history of apparent graduation from minor to major offences, I have no other alternative but to impose a custodial penalty,” she told Seetaram.

The charge of felonious wounding against Seetaram stemmed from a drunken brawl on January 21, 2018, when Seetaram of Lot 121 B Woodley Park Village, West Coast Berbice (WCB), injured his cousin Netram Rabindranauth, 54, a vendor of Lot 64 A Woodley Park Village. Seetaram had pleaded not guilty to the charge but was found guilty after a summary trial. The case for the prosecution led by Police Prosecutor Racquel Mars, disclosed that he used a piece of wood to injure Rabindranauth during an altercation after a drinking spree.