Pundit on attempted murder/suicide: ‘He was bent on killing her’

YVONNE WEBB

One year before he attempted to murder his ex-wife and succeeded in taking his own life, Bishnu Sankar had confessed to Drupatee Sankar’s spiritual advisor Pundit Satyanand Maharaj, that he was going to kill her and commit suicide.

Divorce, countless restraining orders, jail for breaching protection orders, prayers and counselling all proved ineffective in preventing Sankar from carrying out this heinous act, last Sunday. Pundit Maharaj said Sankar, a cocaine addict, was reduced to stealing from villagers to support his habit and was obsessed with murdering his wife and then committing suicide because he could not live without her.

He said Drupatee, who came from a poor family and got married very young, walked out of the marriage after years of constant abuse and started her own events planning business to create a better life for herself and her two sons. But Sankar could not let go. He said he reached out to Sankar who confessed during a counselling session with him more than a year ago, that he was going to kill her and then commit suicide.

During a wake recently in Kelly Village, Caroni where Drupatee lived, Bishnu was boasting about his dastardly plot to kill and be killed, the pundit revealed. “He chose the day she would have celebrated her birthday to carry out his threat,” Pundit Maharaj said.

Drupatee, who was chopped numerous times, may have survived, Pundit Maharaj said, “but the incident will no doubt leave her scarred both physically and emotionally for life.” Drupatee, 50, is scheduled to undergo surgery this week at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope.

The pundit revealed that last Sunday at 7.30 pm, with murder on his mind, Sankar, 55, snuck into Drupatee’s house when one of his sons came out to attend to the dogs. “The door was left opened and he (Sankar) ran into the house, locked the door behind him and started chopping Drupatee. He tried to get her to drink the poison but she resisted.

“His daughter-in-law who was in the house tried to stop the attack, but she too was chopped. She managed to open the door for her husband to come into the house and the boy (the couple’s son) came in just in time to see his father drink a poisonous substance which ended his life,” Pundit Maharaj said.

With a violent and bloody start to the new year, including several domestic situations, Pundit Maharaj is calling on government to embark on a national campaign to end domestic abuse. “Prayers alone cannot stop crime, but that does not mean we have to stop praying.”

He said just as former prime ministers brought national awareness with the Charlie no litter campaign and HIV/Aids campaign, in the same way government has to take the initiative to start a domestic violence awareness to bring about change in the minds of men.

“The word domestic has been used so much it no longer has an impact. This is a national issue, this is not just a domestic issue. This is not one husband and one wife in one village. This can happen in anyone’s home at any point in time and it has been happening too frequently with the end result being our women are murdered and our daughters are murdered.

“Ahimsa is the concept of non aggression in Hinduism. Man sees his wife and children as possessions to be controlled and when he can’t control, he destroys. He destroys them with drugs, alcohol and other vices,” Pundit Maharaj said.

“Evil stalks our land. A demon has enslaved the hearts and minds of man. An evil has been unleased on an unsuspecting nation, man has lost his fear of consequences and justice no longer exist. We live in the killing fields. A man chops his wife and drinks poison without care and it is written off as domestic violence.”

He also lashed out at the Dr Keith Rowley-led administration, which he descried as “rudderless”, lamenting that while 20 police officers are assigned to set speed traps, at the same time the detection rate on serious crime is so low that crime continues to flourish.

“More lives have been lost that there are days in the year. We are at war with evil far greater than we think,” he stated.