Four men were sentenced to serve 11 and a half years imprisonment each on Tuesday after they confessed to kidnapping and killing Foulis, East Coast Demerara (ECD) businessman, Rajendra Singh in 2014.
Deonauth Katwaru, called “Pumpkin”; Tony Thomas called “Fix up”; Michael Lewis, called “Jet lee”; and Adony James called “Pinkey”, appeared before Justice Navindra Singh at the Georgetown High Court.
The men opted to plea to the lesser count of manslaughter which read that between April 5 and April 9, 2014, at the Le Repentir Cemetery, Georgetown, they killed Singh.
State prosecutor, Tyra Bakker asked the court to consider that this was a senseless and cowardly act which stemmed from greed. Bakker told the court that Singh was a man who provided for his family but has left that family behind and they are still mourning his death.
Justice Singh, after considering the men’s early guilty plea, sentenced them to serve 11 and a half years each. The judge further ordered that the prison authorities deduct from the sentence the time the men spent in pre-trial custody from the time of their arrest in 2014.
On the evening of April 5, 2014, Singh was snatched from his business place at Foulis by persons who bundled him into his own vehicle and drove away.
His wife was later approached and told to pay a ransom of $50M; the next day, the ransom demanded was reduced to $25M. When the ransom was not paid by the deadline, Singh was shot by his kidnappers. His body was later discovered in Le Repentir Cemetery on April 9, 2014, with a gunshot wound to the head.
