Another man, Dhanpaul Jagdeo, 25, too, was found dead that same morning, some distance away from the father and son.

Today, one year later, two young widows and a total of eight fatherless children, including Dhanpaul's baby daughter who was just four-months old at the time of his death, are no closer to finding out why their loved ones were so brutally murdered.

No one has been arrested, and during a recent interview with Stabroek News, Mahadai Barran, widow of Bemchand Barran, talked about not having her breadwinner around after 23 years of marriage. As for her son, she misses him more.

Mervyn is missed
"I miss him more," Mahadai said of her fifth-born. Although she and her late husband had four other sons before Mervyn and two daughters after, the 10-year-old was the family's favourite.

"He like de fun and was always willing," she recalled fondly of the little boy's fishing expeditions with his father. And that was how she lost him.

In the wee hours of May 6, Mervyn and his dad left their modest squatter dwelling at Enterprise, East Coast Demerara, to go fishing and shrimping, which usually subsidised the Barran home during the cane cutting off season.

According to Mahadai, the children usually took turns going with their father, but since the three eldest were at a wedding that weekend, Mervyn opted to go on the trip. The last time she saw the duo alive was at 2:30 a.m. when they were riding off on Barran's cycle, heading in the direction of the backdam.

Mahadai said she expected them to return by 8 or 9 a.m. that day, and when they failed to show up, she sent another son to look for Mervyn and her husband. The news was grim...the two were found shot to death in Long Dam in Enterprise backdam, some distance away from Jagdeo's. Reports state that Bemchand Barran was shot in the head and neck, while Mervyn, who was found some distance away from where his father had fallen off his bike, had been shot in the temple.

To this day, no one knows who committed the triple murders, or why.

Life after the incident
At the time of her husband and son's murders, Mahadai said the Barran family was squatting on the reserve of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) and her worry was whether they would have been able to realise Barran's dream of owning a proper home for them.

Today, Mahadai and five of her seven surviving children live in a much more comfortable dwelling than what the family had previously occupied. According to the woman, GUYSUCO gave her a plot of land adjacent to the IMAX Development scheme at Enterprise Gardens, not far from her first home. And a few months ago, they moved into their brand new two-bedroom cottage, which was built with the help of the government. Although there is an ambience of modest comfort, Mahadai said it is still hard on her and the children, especially the two youngest.

"It is very hard not getting help for them. They would ask about they father and I would tell them..." The widow said with a forlorn look. But what touches her more is when the little girls cry.

"When they cry and holler fo dey daddie, I does feel it...they are the two last pet of de house," she said fondly. Her only concern now is making ends meet to keep the girls in school. At ages six and seven, there is a long time before Mahadai's school expenses are over. Last year, while still in mourning, the woman said she would still continue to invest in her children's education as that would have been her husband's wish. Even while Barran was alive, she said, it was a struggle to keep them in school.

Today, Mahadai said much of the monthly assistance that was promised her to look after the girls, is not forthcoming.

"I does grieve, because I ain't get support from nowhere...at least for the four small one (ages six, seven, eight and 13)," the woman implored. Two of her sons are now married - one last December and another, just a few weeks ago.

Investigations
On May 10, 2001, Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj told Stabroek News that the police were "making some headway" in their investigations into the murders. Gajraj also reported that persons were being questioned by a high level team.

When Stabroek News contacted the police, one senior officer reported that the case is still open. "Cases like those never close," that was all that was offered.

Who will care for baby Naomi?
She was just four months old last year May when her father, along with another man and a boy, were brutally gunned down in the Friendship/ Vigilance backdam on the East Coast Demerara.

Today, Naomi is quite a handful, as she darts around her grandparents' home at Non Pariel Squatting Area on the East Coast of Demerara, where she and her young mother remained after the tragedy. It was there Stabroek News found the bright-eyed, curly-top little girl when it revisited the murders of 25-year-old Dhanpaul Jagdeo, Bemchand Barran and Barran's 10-year-old son, Mervyn.

The teen widow
Just nine more days and she could have celebrated her nineteenth birthday with her new husband. Bibi Zameena and Dhanpaul Jagdeo had just been married eight months prior to his death. Instead, the mother of one found herself widowed.

Over a year has passed since the May 6, incident, but the pain still remains for the now 20-year-old woman. When this newspaper visited her parents' home at Non Pariel last Saturday, she and her dad were now returning from the office of the Food For the Poor, where they had gone to seek assistance.

She gathers baby Naomi in her arms and smiles as their photograph is taken, but from the time her late husband's name is mentioned, the tears flowed unceasingly for Bibi Zameena. It was her father who explained about the "push around" the young mother is having acquiring the aid promised after Jagdeo's death. But when Bibi Zameena speaks, it was just words of love for the dead weeder.

"What hurt me more, is not even a year done...we only marry and live for eight months," she said haltingly. And it hurts more whenever her two older sisters visit with their husbands. "When me sisters come home with their husband, meh does feel it, because he [Dhanpaul] is not there."

The search for a lost boat
The last time she saw her husband alive was 05:30 hrs on May 6, 2001, when he left to look for a boat in Annandale backdam, some miles away. Dhanpaul Jagdeo would have had to travel through the villages of Coldingen, Strathspey, Bladen Hall, Vigilance, Friendship and Buxton before reaching his destination. But he never turned up.

According to Bibi Zameena, her husband had told her that his employer, `Jinga', had instructed him to search for a missing boat. She said Dhanpaul had gone out two mornings prior to his death and was unsuccessful. He was on the same mission that Sunday morning, when he was killed.

"Me husband say that `Jinga' tell he that he got to search for a small boat wuh does carry in manure...dat de boat loss [and] if he nah search fo de boat he gun get knock off from de job. Is three day - the Friday, Saturday he search for de boat [and] de Sunday he get he death," the woman recounted.

Asked where, exactly, Dhanpaul had gone, Bibi Zameena only knew that he left to search for the boat "at the man who got the cane farm at Annandale backdam."

She said everyday, Dhanpaul returned home at about 9 a.m.

"When meh mammie come, she tell meh Bemchand and he son get chop up and all me coulda do is start holler, because me know that me husband ain't come back," Bibi Zameena said tearfully. Her mother had tried to console her, promising that Dhanpaul might still have shown up later in the day, but her father cleared up all doubts later that day.

"When me father come back de afternoon..." Bibi Zameena could not continue. "Up to now de pain still left, because he was so kind. He never quarrel, he doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke..."

She knows life has to go on, but the young mother said many nights she cries as she puts her daughter to bed. The toddler may still be too young to know what causes her mother's pain, and Bibi Zameena says she doesn't know whether she will have the strength to tell her later what had happened to the dad she will never know.

The support of her parents
Like the wife of Bemchand Barran, the other man killed the same day as Dhanpaul, Bibi Zameena has received $3M from the government to build a house. Last year, both families were also promised monthly assistance for themselves and the total of eight children left without their breadwinners.

But today, both women have complained that the monthly aid has not materialised.

"This child has to eat," states Bibi Zameena's father, Rahamat Ali. He said he deposited the $3M in an account at a bank, but insists that that money must go towards building a house for his husbandless daughter.

"This child [Bibi Zameena] don't have education and I explain this to all the government ministers...We come from a very poor background. Only lately ah struggle and ah build this house," Ali stated.

He explains that Bibi Zameena had an accident as a child, preventing her from acquiring a sound academic foothold.

"She encountered an accident when she was just a year and five months. She fall down from a nine-feet house, burst she skull, and the doctor say she cannot take education, so the child is not having a sound education. If she is to get a wuk to mind the baby, da mean she would have to take a domestic wuk and that would be advantage taking on her, because people would look at it because she don't have a husband...what kind a job she can get? If I was not alive and the mother was not alive, I don't know what become of her," Ali reasoned.

According to the man, just recently, they were able to secure a houselot at Coldingen. "They did give her one houselot 'till at Foulis and I refuse it. My daughter can't go and live there alone. Eventually, after ah fight and fight, they finally give her a houselot at Coldingen." Barran's widow was fortunate to get a houselot from the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) where her husband was employed as a canecutter.

"I trying meh best with them. Whatever little I work for...and is weeding work I do. When the rain fall, for three weeks I ain't getting work and this morning, we went to the Food for the Poor to see if we can get a little assistance, but we ain't get through..." Ali told Stabroek News.

Apparently, First Lady Varshnie Jagdeo had given Bibi Zameena a letter to take to the Minister within the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security, Bibi Shadick, for the public assistance.

"If the First Lady din nah been want me foh get the public assistance, she wouldn't to send me there and full up me form," the young widow stated.

"I got two other son-in-law...but this boy touch me so deeply like if is one of meh child dead foh me. I feel it a lot sometimes sitting down at this home and remember his kindness and goodness to us and sometimes I sit and cry just like that for this boy," Ali said of the dead Dhanpaul.

Dhanpaul Jagdeo was buried on May 14, the day before Bibi Zameena turned 19. "Every year I have to remember," the young woman said tearfully.