Chaguanas woman to pay $1M for acid attack

A CHAGUANAS businesswoman who was sentenced to 12 years’ in prison but spared additional punishment of ten strokes with the cat-o-nine tails in 1997, has been ordered to compensate her former business partner a little over $1 million for disfiguring him in an acid attack.

Myra Bhagwansingh was ordered by Master Martha Alexander to compensate Raffick Mohammed, 59, a total of $976,539, plus interest from 1996 to January 31, 2019, and CAN $10,092.95, also with interest but from August 29, 1991 to January 31, 2019.

Mohammed was left with permanent disabilities and sued Bhagwansingh after she was convicted of throwing acid on his back and face at her clothing store, in Chaguanas, on August 29, 1991. She had called him to the store to settle a dispute and told him, “Take that,” throwing acid on his face, and when he tried to get away, she threw more acid on his back.

She was the first woman to be sentenced to strokes with the cat o’nine tails (a device consisting of nine knotted cords or thongs of raw-hide attached to a handle). She appealed, and the prison term was affirmed but she received no strokes.

In her decision, Alexander said in Mohammed’s case, the attack on him was “horrific.”

Because of his extensive injuries to his face and body, he has been unable to work. He owned his own distribution company and had surgeries done at St Clair Medical Centre and in Canada. After numerous skin graphs were done, Mohammed had to wear a face mask and pressure garments for three years. He also had to take daily injections for his skin to remain soft and his mouth was wired shut after the skin graph operations. He was also depressed because of his physical appearance and said he lost his girlfriend and many friends.

Mohammed, who was represented by attorney Shabana Mohammed, said he stopped picking up his son at school and stopped playing sports, instead confining himself to the house for ten-years because of his lack of self-esteem and confidence.

“Raffick’s evidence reads as if it were a chronicle of abject and never-ending agony,” Alexander said, adding that his injuries had a “squeezing impact” on his life and the agonising pain and torture he was put through “at the acidic hands of Myra.”

She also said, “By dousing him with acid, she did not only burn his physical body but signed away his life as he knew it, leaving him some twenty-seven years’ with a charred, painful existence.”

In his assessment claim, Mohammed said he still feels a sense of bitterness and anger for what was done to him, and hurt because Bhagwansingh has never shown remorse or apologised to him.

“I feel as if no amount of money is enough to compensate me for the decades of pain and suffering I have endured due to the defendant’s horrible and cruel actions.”

He said he cannot look at Bhagwansingh without becoming angry.