Elderly shop owner found gagged, murdered in La Grange home
An elderly shop owner was on Sunday evening found dead with her mouth gagged in her La Grange, West Bank Demerara (WBD) home.
The dead woman has been identified as 85-year-old Bibi Nasmonisha Ramjit of Old Road, La Grange, WBD.
The woman’s house was reportedly ransacked, thus leaving investigators to work with the theory that the woman was killed during the commissioning of a robbery. The elderly woman lived alone.
According to information received, relatives of the now dead woman were summoned to the scene after her motionless body was discovered.
A relative explained that the now dead woman operated a grocery shop and about four months ago, bandits had invaded her property during which they terrorised and assaulted her. They would have escaped with a large sum of money. The elderly woman, however, did not make a report to the police due to fears that they would return.
“Somebody went in from the side fence and stole a lot of money from her… I am not sure of the amount… my husband went and put on locks on the back door and change the locks and he gave her the key…we told her to make a report and she said she can’t because she has no proof…” the relative explained.
One month after that incident, Ramjit was sleeping in her hammock, and again bandits invaded her home and stole an undisclosed sum of money.
“…she is financially well off she doesn’t need to work; she just does it to keep herself active… she decided to close down the shop and sell out everything… after she was selling out the stuff, she had the money from the stuff that she sold, and they went in and clean her money out, somebody spray her…”, they said.
The family is alleging that Sunday’s incident was also a robbery. This suspicion came after the woman’s home was ransacked.
“The same place they went in the first incident, they went in the front room and they tumbled for the money, they know exactly where to go. The second incident, they did the same exact thing…”. Up to late Sunday evening, detectives were dusting for fingerprints and looking for any piece of evidence to catch the perpetrators.
At the scene, persons in the neighbourhood said that they did not hear any strange sounds or see any abnormal movements. The woman’s body was taken to the Ezekiel Funeral Home awaiting a post-mortem.