Twenty-seven (27)-year-old Jackie Tapsie of Lusignan, East Coast Demerara (ECD) who is under investigation for escaping from lawful custody and the alleged murder of an elderly grocery, was on Wednesday (yesterday) arrested in Suriname.
Tapsie was handed over to the Police by Surinamese authorities as investigations continue.
The body of the 86-year-old female grocer was discovered lifeless on her bed with the woman’s hands and feet bound on October 25,last year, by a farmer who returned to the home of the now deceased female to make a payment for some eddoes he had collected earlier in the day.
Bibi Ramjit of La Grange Old Road, West Bank Demerara (WBD), was said to have been murdered between 15:00h and 17:00h by “person(s) unknown.”
HGP Nightly News was told that Ramjit lived alone in her two storeyed wooden and concrete house; the upper flat was her living quarters while the lower flat houses a grocery shop.
The discovery was made by a 59-year-old farmer of the Schoonard village, WBD, who had visited the woman’s shop to purchase eddoes on a Sunday afternoon around 15:00h.
He told the cops that when he obtained the items, he handed the woman a $5,000 bill but she “didn’t have any change”, so he left with the eddoes but promised the woman that he would return later in the afternoon with the payment.
According to the farmer, he returned to Ramjit’s residence some two hours later and he noticed that both the shop’s door and the woman’s back door to the upper flat were “wide open.”
HGP Nightly News understands that the man told investigators that he “called out several times” but the woman never responded and this prompted him to proceed to the upper flat of the house in order to ensure that the woman was okay, however, upon entering the house, he did not see her, so he ventured further into a bedroom where he allegedly saw Ramjit lying motionless, on her back, with her feet and hands tied.
According to the farmer, he immediately raised an alarm and contact was made with the Guyana Police Force (GPF) about his discovery.
A police statement on the following day (Monday) said that when ranks arrived at the scene, there were no marks of violence seen on the woman’s body and although several persons in the area were questioned, no useful information was obtained according to the investigators.
Ramjit’s body was then escorted to West Demerara Regional Hospital, West Coast Demerara (WCD), and subsequently transported to the Ezekiel Funeral Parlor.
