Husband charged with murder

May 12, 2010 News

Ten days after Bridgette Gangadin’s body was found lying in front of the Vigilance Police Station, the  Director of Public Prosecutions Shalimar Ali-Hack has recommended that her husband be charged with the capital offence of murder.
Kaieteur News was told by Gangadin’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Bernard De Santos, that he was re-arrested on the capital charge late yesterday afternoon
A source at the DPP’s office indicated that there was enough evidence to support the murder charge.
The woman’s husband Dwarka Gangadin was initially detained about two hours after the discovery of his wife’s body.
He was released four days later as prosecutors completed the file on the matter.
A post mortem examination performed on the woman’s body by government pathologist Dr Nehaul Singh gave the cause of death as a crushed skull.
However, while the woman’s husband enjoyed brief freedom, the dead woman’s relatives sought and obtained the services of Trinidadian pathologist, Professor Hubert Daisley, who created some controversy, by finding that there was evidence that the woman was strangled.
This led to the re-arrest of Dwarka Gangadin last Saturday. He was again released on $200,000 bail as investigators awaited the advice of the DPP.
That advice came yesterday afternoon even as Dwarka Gangadin was preparing to cremate his wife’s body.
He was promptly rearrested for a third time and had the murder charge instituted against him.
Senior counsel DeSantos told this newspaper that he has made a request for the bail money to be handed back to the accused man’s relatives.
De Santos also said that Gangadin would be allowed to go to his wife’s cremation, since the police were in possession of a court issued document on Monday that permitted him to be present.
However this newspaper understands that since the man has been charged with murder and is to attend court today, that order could be superseded by the capital charge.
New court order
The woman’s relatives yesterday moved to the High Court, seeking to alter some of the funeral arrangements that were in the initial court order.
Both families have now agreed that they would allow one of Dwarka Gangadin’s relatives to dress the body, in the presence of the woman’s relatives.
The earlier motion which was granted by Justice Rishi Persaud, stipulated that Gangadin alone be present.
The body is to be taken to her mother’s residence for viewing lasting one hour. Thereafter the body would be taken to her husband’s residence at Lusignan, East Coast Demerara, for further viewing.
At the husband’s home there is to be a Hindu ritual, after which the body would be taken to the Good Hope foreshore for cremation.
Bridgette Gangadin’s body, with the head crushed, was found in front of the Vigilance Police Station, two Sundays ago. Her husband later told police that the two had an argument and that she had jumped from the moving vehicle.
He admitted that he panicked and left her on the roadway.