Man sentenced to death for killing wife

FORTY-SIX-year-old Devindra Hansraj, called ‘Dog Man,’ was on Thursday sentenced to death after being found guilty of killing his common- law wife Maharani Udairaj, called

‘Sherry,’ at their home at Grant 1780 Crabwood Creek, Corentyne, on December 18, 2014.
The court marshal made the pronouncement after the jury returned the unanimous verdict of guilty to the charge of murder. The court was asked to stand as the sentence was passed.

The verdict left relatives of the accused shocked, while family members of the deceased were pleased with the outcome. Earlier, the jury had returned to the court room, stating there was a 7/5 in favour of the prosecution; however, after being advised by Justice James Bovell-Drakes, they returned to the deliberation room and returned with the verdict 40 minutes later.
The convict stood speechless and his eyes were seemingly filled with tears as the marshal was ordered to take him away, while his relatives lingered in the courtroom deciding their way forward.

State Prosecutor Ms Orintha Schmidt, who opened her case on January 4 last, had relied heavily on the circumstantial evidence of Yogeshwari Ragubir called Mala, a neighbour and the caution statement attributed to the accused. In her evidence the witness Ragubir, said, she was watching television in her home about 17:00hrs, when she heard a noise coming from the back room of her neighbour’s house.
She recognised the voice of the accused and that of his now deceased wife. The accused’s voice was heard daily .They were quarrelling, she told Justice James Bovell-Drakes and the mixed jury.

Subsequently, the witness went to sit under her house and whilst there she heard ‘Sherry’s screams at various levels from a high pitch to very low. Minutes later, the accused, who looked normal, was seen walking out of the yard. He had returned to the yard before walking out again, seconds later with a phone and a yellow envelope in his hands.
In his caution statement, Hansraj said, “Officer, my wife ‘Sherry’ is having a relationship with a man who live two houses away. I asked her to stop and she still continue behind my back. Her sister asked me to allow Sherry to go with her to Georgetown. She left to go to her sister at about 15:00hrs to sleep at her home, so that they could travel early the next day. ““On December 18, 2014, I telephoned her. She said she was at Balwant Singh Hospital. I asked her to speak to her sister, but was told that she was vomiting.”

After she returned home and was questioned about her whereabouts, the woman responded: “Is she business.” Consequently, the accused claimed he could not take her actions anymore and opted to leave, but was prevented from doing so by the knife-wielding woman.
“She said if I leave she will bore me and kill me. I tell she I leaving and she rushed up to me with the knife to bore me, I held her. I tried to take away the knife. And the knife bore her neck. I told her, see what you do. I tried to stop the bleeding, but it was too much. I became scared and I left her lying on the floor. I threw the knife in the trench. I did not bore her. The knife was in her hand when I held her hand with the knife,” he concluded.

Meanwhile, Zamaludeen Khan, the owner of the property, recalled returning to the lower flat of the two-storey building, when he observed that his front door was open and on checking inside, noticed that blood was dripping from the upper flat. After summoning the police, he went to the upper flat where he saw the body of ‘Sherry’, clad only in her underwear lying face down in a pool of blood. There was a wound to her neck. In his evidence, Government pathologist Dr Vivikanand Brijmohan said the woman died due to a severed artery