Husband gets 15 years for brutal wife killing
FISHERMAN Budram Persaud, who went on a high wine spree with his wife, Rubeena Sammy, before brutally killing her in 2006, was jailed for 15 years on Thursday. Justice Winston Patterson imposed the sentence at the Demerara Assizes on Thursday after hearing how the prisoner had beaten the woman with a rolling pin and forced her to eat mud from a trench.
The judge said he was contemplating a 40-year jail term after being told that pathologist Dr. Nehaul Singh, who performed the post mortem examination on the victim, found 28 abrasions, 22 contusions, several lacerations, a fractured skull and mud in the stomach.
But he decided on 15 years after taking certain circumstances into consideration, including that the convict had already spent five years in prison, did not waste the Police or the Court’s time and immediately expressed remorse.
The Court heard that the prisoner, firstly, told police he did not mean to kill his wife nor expect her to die from the blows he had struck her; that he was sorry for what had happened and it had occurred because the mother of nine had abandoned her children, who were kept away from school while he was away at sea working as a fisherman.
According to the doctor, apart from mud, the stomach content smelt strongly of alcohol and the cause of death was subdural haemorrhage, due to a fractured skull and multiple blunt traumas to head, compounded by multiple blunt trauma to the body.
At the time of her death, Sammy, 39, was the mother of six girls and three boys.
Prosecuting were State Counsel Judith Gildharie-Mursalin and Teshana James-Lake, opposite Defence Counsel Peter Hugh, who made a stirring plea in mitigation.
Persaud was, originally, charged with the capital offence of murder but he was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter.