A 47-year-old female taxi driver was found dead at Lust-en-Rust, near ‘Diary’, not far from La Parfaite Harmonie, West Bank Demerara, early Sunday morning.

The Toyota Axio motorcar with which she plied her trade and had purchased just six months ago was reportedly missing.

The woman has been identified as Indira Bipat, called ‘Jenny’, of Samaroo Dam, Pouderoyen, also on the West Bank.

According to Bipat’s son, Derrick Samaroo, his mother left home on Saturday afternoon around 17:00hrs saying she was going out for about an hour or so, but never returned.

He told the Guyana Chronicle that while he couldn’t say what may have led to her demise, he had the presence of mind to report her missing at the Vreed-en-Hoop and La Grange Police Stations on Sunday morning, after she didn’t return home after work on Saturday night. “All I know is dat meh old lady dead,” the 24-year-old said.

He said that his sister, who is six years his junior, tried calling their mother on her cell-phone all Sunday night when she failed to return home but to no avail.

Samaroo said that it was she who received the call saying that a woman’s body was found at ‘Diary’, and he who went to the Ezekiel Funeral Parlour, on Best Road, Vreed-en-Hoop, where he positively identified the cadaver as that of his mother in the presence of the police on Sunday.

He said that the police did not tell him much, other than that they’d learnt that his mom was last seen on Sunday afternoon at the taxi base where she worked, and was heard saying that she was going on a ‘job’ and would be going home when she was done.
This was after she’d received a call on her cell-phone, which is also missing, the youngster said.

Bipat reportedly worked with ‘Goed Fortuin Cabs’, a West Bank taxi service for the past six months after she bought a silver-grey Toyota Axio motorcar, the licence plate of which is PXX 4114.

Bipat, who lived with her mother and two children, was reportedly a security guard for many years before trying her hand at taxi driving.

Grieving relatives gathered at her home on Sunday told the Guyana Chronicle that they rather suspect that it was someone she knew who’d hired her, as she was not in the habit of picking up strangers. She did not work much at nights either, and whenever she did, it was only to transport persons she was familiar with.

While Bipat’s body was reportedly found head down in a drain at Lust-en-Rust, it is not clear whether it bore any marks of violence.

Son Derrick said that as a single-parent, his mother worked tirelessly to give he and his sister a better life than she’d had as a child, and that although she was a housewife, she was comfortable working as a taxi driver.

As for enemies, Derrick said that although she was what one would call ‘a straight-up person’, she did not have any as far as he knows.

She was the family’s sole breadwinner for many years, after her husband died when he and his sister were very little, he recalled. Up to press time, the police had not yet issued a statement about the murder, but according to relatives, no arrests had yet been made, and the missing car had not been found either.