A Linden family struggles to recover after a brutal attack

May 02, 2021 News

Physically and emotionally scarred…

By Vanessa Braithwaite

Kaieteur News – It is an innate desire of most mothers to ensure their children are safe and not in harm’s way. In fact, mothers have testified of a feeling in their tummy, unique to them, when bad news about their children reaches their ear. It is the same feeling of contractions when you are giving birth, some have asserted.

Manisha Singh.

A few weeks ago, Sandra Singh, a mother of two young Linden women, experienced this same feeling, when she heard her daughters, Sunita and Manisha Singh, were brutally attacked by father of Manisha’s children, Rajin Allen. Her mind was racing with bloody thoughts and even death, as memories of her daughter being attacked in her home by the hands of the same man, came rushing back to her mind. In many instances, she had to save Manisha from the blows she received from the man when they had lived just a stone’s throw away from her home.
When Sandra turned up at the hospital, it was as if life left her body when she saw the state her daughters were in. Sunita’s entire face was bandaged from second-degree burns she received from scalding water that Rajin threw on her. Manisha was barely recognisable, with her eyes and other parts of her face swollen.
Sunita has since been discharged from the hospital but her face remains disfigured. Recollecting what transpired on that dreadful day, was a painful ordeal for the 18-year-old. It was as if she was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Manisha who is recovering at the hospital.

With tears in her eyes, she recalled the moments before she was doused with hot water. “I didn’t have no confrontation with them two, because I was in the bedroom and they were in the living room but he attacked me, before he beat she, with the hot water and then he went and beat she, then come back in the house and continue to beat me,” she recalled.
As she lay helpless on the floor, Rajin demanded the password for her sister’s phone. “That was the first time, I didn’t know what really was going on; I was so confused. I didn’t had my head on. When he come in the house, I said Rajin you bun me up, why you do this? You want the phone, look the phone. Then he said open the phone, when I tell he I don’t know the password, he started beating me,” she recalled.
At that time, Manisha was lying in an unconscious state in the yard after Rajin allegedly beat her with a concrete block and other tools. Her head and feet got the brunt of the beating.

Sunita Singh’s face has been disfigured.

According to Sandra, that attack was the end result of years of abuse her daughter endured at the hands of Rajin. Her daughter, she revealed, had lived with the young man since she was 15 years old. “My daughter and Rajin live about five to six years now and from beginning he was like an abusive man to she. Many times they would get problem home; he would beat up she, chop she, cuff she, buss up she mouth, bound up she eye and when I go and talk he, he would buse me,” she recounted.
Several reports of physical abuse were made to police and Rajin was arrested on a few occasions.
As a result, Sandra said she had encouraged her daughter to end the relationship, but she (her daughter) hesitated because of the three children she shares with Rajin.
The woman recalled, however, that her daughter decided to leave last December, not only because of the physical abuse, but also because of financial abuse. “He would work and don’t give she no money to buy goods and she would come and say ‘mommy I need things to cook’ and I would say Manisha what kind of man you living with that hungrying you and yuh children,” she said.
When her daughter left, Sandra recalled that she did so without her children and when she returned weeks later to collect them, Rajin had refused to give them to her.
This, the woman believes, was in fact a tactic to lure her daughter back to the home. Since he was not successful in doing so, she is convinced that the eventual attack was premeditated.

Rajin Allen has been sentenced to four years in prison.

After the attack, Rajin, in a Facebook live, accused Manisha of cheating and partying while he worked hard to take care of his children. “I didn’t want do it you know, you know is years upon years of sacrifice and she partying, me ain’t want kill she……suicide is not the way. Me chiren is the most important thing to me, I does climb coconut tree, I does fish and buy and sell greens, construction work, gas station work and all yuh want do is party…all the party you going to, I got to beg you to come and see you children, literally beg she to come and see she children. I had to put an end because I fed up,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sandra has willingly taken on the responsibility of helping to care for Manisha who remains hospitalised. But it hasn’t been an easy task since, according to the woman, neither she nor her husband is currently employed. The two, she revealed, would normally survive on subsistence farming. But since the incident, Sandra said that they have not been able to sell crops to make a daily earning as she has been visiting the hospital twice per day. “Well right now it is financially challenging, every day I got to get money to go and come, morning and afternoon. I don’t have a job, we does do gardening and sell and the money we does get it can’t support everything because the quantity we does sell when the day come is just a small amount. Right now it is very hard because I am not getting to work because I am busy with she, me ain’t getting to earn a dollar,” she said.
In addition to the financial challenge, she is worried about her grandchildren who are currently with the father’s family. As such Sandra engaged the Welfare Officer on the matter but was told that she cannot take custody of the children at this time.
As she tries to come to grips with the incident, Sandra said that she is praying for her daughter’s speedy recovery. “She did she foot surgery; she can’t get up, she can’t get up to do nothing on her own. She can’t eat properly, she can’t get up to do nothing, every time she get up she head swinging because of the fractured skull, so we just gah hope and pray she come through.”
Rajin has since appeared before Magistrate, Wanda Fortune, and pleaded guilty to two counts of felonious wounding. He will spend the next four years behind bars.
While he will walk free again, a young woman (Sunita) will never look into the mirror and see the beauty she once possessed and three children will live with the emotional trauma of witnessing a brutal attack that caused their mother (Manisha) to be hospitalised with debilitating injuries.