A SCHOOL teacher and mother of one was found murdered about two miles from her Sangre Grande home yesterday morning, hours after she was reported kidnapped by her husband, a police officer.
Up to press time last night, a close male relative of the victim was being questioned in relation to the crime.
Bhagmat Seemungal-Akaloo was aged 44. She was a mother of a three-year-old girl and was married to a police officer who worked in the Service’s Finance Branch.
She was employed as a teacher at the Manzanilla Secondary School and had been working there since mid-2008.
Police said they responded to a report that around 5 a.m. the woman, her husband and their daughter were asleep as the couple’s home at 425 Guaico Tamana Road, when a van stopped in front of the house.
Seemungal-Akaloo is said to have walked out the front door, as the van looked like her brother’s.
Police reports stated that Seemungal-Akaloo, who was dressed in her night wear, was grabbed, and forced into the house by men who emerged from the van.
The intruders, police were told, tied up her husband and daughter and ransacked the house. As they left, they snatched Seemungal-Akaloo, bundled her into their van and sped off.
Sangre Grande detectives were alerted to the incident and they began a search for the woman. There was no ransom demand.
Around 11 a.m., a Sangre Grande resident, known only as Sylvester, was walking his dog in the San Louis Road area. San Louis Road is a well-developed residential area but beyond the last house is a dirt road that slices through a forest.
He said that while walking along the dirt road, he saw at the side a green sheet, ’and a hand sticking out’ and called the police.
As officers peered through the scene further, they found a bloody kitchen knife and a pair of gloves.
Seemungal-Akaloo’s body was wrapped in a green sheet and was clad in her night wear. There was a large stab wound to her neck, officers said.
Some of Seemungal-Akaloo’s relatives were also on the scene yesterday. One woman, her aunt Roopandaye Thindaye, described her as ’a nice, quiet person and this thing is shocking to the entire family’.
Cindy Sharma, a former Opposition senator who teaches at the Manzanilla Secondary School, said, ’I can only speak for myself. It’s a very traumatic experience and we are just trying to recover at this point in time. It’s just shocking to know that this could have happened and to someone from the school’s family.’
Officers from the Homicide Bureau, including Insp Johnnie Abraham, along with Sgt Beverly Paul of the Sangre Grande CID, are continuing investigations.
