Unaware that her husband had been stabbed to death by bandits, a wounded Dolly Sooknanan sat on the floor next to his body waiting for him to awake from his sleep. Police said Sooknanan, 86, was in a state of shock after bandits broke into their Spring Trace, Siparia home, sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning and stabbed both she and her husband, Balkaran Dookie, 76, before ransacking the house.
Up to yesterday she was being kept under police protection while undergoing medical treatment. Dookie’s son, Mukesh, who lives a few houses away, said he was working at Quarry Village, when around 11.30 am his wife called and said the neighbour had not seen his father and stepmother for the morning.
Knowing that the elderly couple routinely sit in their porch for breakfast every morning, he said he immediately went to check on them.
“I went by the house and I called out ‘mammy’ and she answered and said come inside and see if I could wake up the old man, she don’t know what wrong with him. I went inside the living room and I saw him slumped in a recliner with a stab to his chest. He was already dead and she had blood on her face and like she got stabbed on her back and chest too. I went outside and called 999 and the police came,” Mukesh said.
He said when he asked Sooknanan what happened, she first replied “It was a lady and two men,” but later on, she said someone just dropped him (Dookie) there. Although the house was ransacked, Mukesh nor the police were able to say whether anything was stolen. Mukesh said his father had no quarrels with anyone, adding that Dookie lived with Sooknanan for the past three years.
Confused over the killing, he said even if bandits wanted money they could have got it easily from two elderly people. “Yesterday morning I shaved his head because tomorrow was their big day. They had to collect pension so both of them would have gone to do that.”