Neesa Gopaul’s murder: A mother’s betrayal that has left “painful, enduring scars” – CCJ Judge

Mothers always love their children; they are supposed to be good to them. But Neesa Lalita Gopaul’s mother, Bibi Shareema Gopaul, was not good. The 57-year-old woman betrayed her 16-year-old daughter in the worst possible way.
She callously murdered her, depriving her of her right to live in a safe and nurturing environment and her chance to learn, grow and realise her full potential.
This was the view expressed by Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) Judge Peter Jamadar in his written judgement, in which the regional court, by a majority, upheld the mother’s conviction for her daughter’s 2010 murder and reduced her jail sentence from 45 to 25 years.

Bibi’s lover, Jarvis Small, 44, who had been jointly tried with her and convicted of the teen’s murder in 2015, was, however, freed, after the CCJ allowed his appeal against conviction and sentence, on finding that prejudicial evidence admitted at his trial rendered his conviction unsafe.
The badly decomposed body with the head bashed in of the younger Gopaul was found stuffed in a suitcase in a creek at the Emerald Tower Resort, at Madewini, Linden-Soesdyke Highway on October 2, 2010. Also discovered were her passport, bank card, and other personal items.
The suitcase was wrapped with rope and attached to dumb-bells in an apparent effort to keep her body submerged. The straight A Queen’s College student was found days after she was reported missing from her Leonora, West Coast Demerara (WCD) home by her mother.

Her cause of death was given as multiple blunt force trauma to the head.
Her mother and Small were arrested the day after her remains were discovered at a hotel where they were found by the Police sitting next to each other.

Betrayal, cruelty
“We [the CCJ] cannot help but feel empathy for Neesa and all concerned for their irreparable loss and suffering,” Justice Jamadar wrote, adding that Neesa’s murder was “gruesome as it was callous and inflicted as it was by a mother on her daughter, an act of betrayal and cruelty.”
Reflecting on the teen’s life, the CCJ Judge said that she was born in 1994 and would have been celebrating her 28th birthday this year. Shortly after her birth, he said her family moved from Anna Catherina, another village on the WCD to Leonora.
Neesa, he shared, spent her childhood days in Leonora, attending the Leonora Nursery School and then the Leonora Primary School, where she performed outstandingly at the then Common Entrance Exams, placing in the top 15 in Guyana which earned her a spot at the prestigious Queen’s College. According to him, Neesa was a Muslim, had a younger sister, a grandfather, friends, and a dog named “Tiger” and was surely loved and admired by many.

“No doubt, her death and the inhumane way in which she died have left painful and enduring scars in the hearts and minds of family, friends, and communities,” said the Judge.

Prosecution’s case
To convict the older Gopaul, the prosecution relied on the testimony of its main witness, Simone De Nobrega, who was at the time awaiting trial for offences related to obtaining credit by false pretence. De Nobrega had testified to meeting Bibi in the Police lock-ups, where Bibi confessed about her and Small’s role in the girl’s mother.
The witness had testified that Bibi told her that she and Small had an extra-marital affair and that he eventually encouraged her to kill her husband, Javed Gopaul, and she did by poisoning him. She further related that Neesa subsequently found out about her father’s poisoning, made a report to the Police, and later talked about pursuing that report.
As a result, she said Bibi told her that she and Small made plans to kill her daughter.
On the day of the murder, Bibi was with her two daughters and Small in a car along the Linden-Soesdyke Highway. While the younger daughter was asleep, Small began strangling Neesa in the car. Her mother then stopped the car on a trail where Small took Neesa out of the car and bludgeoned her on the head with a piece of wood before placing her body in the car’s trunk.
They then left the scene of the crime, leaving Neesa’s lifeless body overnight in the vehicle.
The mother disclosed to her cellmate that on the advice of Small, she took personal items that belonged to her daughter from her home, such as her bank book, passport, and religious robe to make it appear as though the teen had run away. She also told her cellmate that she took a pair of dumb-bells that Small had given her and a length of rope to attach the weights to the suitcase in which they had planned to place her daughter’s body to keep it submerged.
The lovers returned to the scene the next day and stuffed the girl’s body in the suitcase with the personal items before submerging it in a creek by weighing it down with dumb-bells and rope.
Bibi and Small were initially sentenced to 106 and 96 years’ imprisonment, respectively, after they were found unanimously guilty of Neesa’s murder following a trial before Justice Navindra Singh at the Demerara High Court in March 2015. The pair shortly after lodged separate appeals against their convictions and sentences at the Court of Appeal of Guyana, which in August 2021, affirmed their convictions but reduced their prison term to 45 years each.
Dissatisfied, they challenged the local appellate court’s decision at the Trinidad-based CCJ, which delivered its ruling last Friday, settling the more than a decade-old case that had sent shockwaves throughout the country. Bibi only becomes eligible for parole after the expiration of 15 years. (G1)