THE brutal, heinous and callous killing of a wife by someone who had killed his previous wife  earned a Barrackpore lorry driver a 27-year sentence.

However, Ramesh “Blood” Sieunarine will serve a term of 13 years, five months and 22 days for killing his common-law wife Tricia Ramsaran–Ramdass on June 9, 2020. This was the sentence he was left with after receiving discounts for his guilty plea and the time he has already spent in prison awaiting trial.

Justice Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds sentenced him,  accepting a plea-agreement deal with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions which allowed him to plead guilty to manslaughter based on provocation.

He was initially charged with Ramsaran-Ramdass’s murder. According to the judge’s sentencing ruling, Sieunarine killed Ramsaran-Ramdass in a drunken stupor during an argument about her fidelity.

“The papers suggest that he killed this wife because he couldn’t bear to visualise that she had performed fellatio on some other man.

“With all due respect, courts must signal a strong message to all persons in society that women cannot be killed simply because they wish to exercise sexual autonomy.

“If the relationship is no longer a loving, committed and thriving one, the aggrieved party is free to leave and move on. The statistics suggest that we are not meeting the deterrent effect,” Ramsumair-Hinds acknowledged.

Ramsaran-Ramdass was strangled to death and also suffered head trauma during an argument with Sieunarine at their Sukhan Trace, Barrackpore, home.

The judge rejected his entreaty that his behaviour was caused by his abuse of alcohol as a coping mechanism for his stress. While acknowledging that “alcoholism is a disease and can be a maladaptive coping mechanism for the stressors of life,” she said when it “results in family violence and even extreme acts of violence, I cannot, in the circumstances of this prisoner, countenance it as a mitigating factor.”

She also considered his previous conviction for the unlawful killing of a previous wife in 2006, for which he was put on a bond.

“I am of the view that the conviction for unlawfully killing a previous wife was particularly aggravating. I accept that the prisoner successfully mitigated the loss of self-control involved in the killing of that previous wife, such that he was placed on a bond.

“Respectfully though, at what point do we draw a line and colloquially say, ‘Once is a mistake, but twice is a habit’? This is the second wife to die by strangulation at this prisoner’s hands, and his explanation is the same – ‘She provoked me to kill her.’

“I looked closely at the circumstances. The trigger involved in the provocation by the first wife he killed had to do with that woman’s attempt to kill his young son. As I said, the sentencing court at that time was persuaded by the weight of that mitigating factor.

"But what is his complaint this time?

“The papers suggest that he killed this wife because he couldn’t bear to visualise that she had performed fellatio on some other man…” the judge sa