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> Deaf/mute abducted, relatives chopped

> By CHERYL ANN CHAITOO-BERNARD South Bureau

> A 20-year-old deaf/mute woman was abducted and three of her female

relatives

> chopped and stabbed, by a man who stormed their home early yesterday

> morning.

> A big pot of channa on a firecracker and bloodstains throughout the

> ransacked wooden house at #127 Dow Village, South Oropouche, were

yesterday

> grim reminders of what had taken place just hours before.

> At about 4 a.m., Kamla Ranjoo, 44 and her daughter-in-law Cindy Rampersad,

> 21 were making doubles, which Ranjoo sold for a living, when a man, armed

> with a cutlass and a knife and wearing a bandanna over the lower half of

his

> face, entered through an open back door and attacked them both.

> Police are investigating reports there were also three men waiting outside

> the house.

> Ranjoo received several wounds, including chop wounds to both hands and

> across her stomach and a stab wound to her shoulder. Rampersad who was

> reportedly trying to escape down the stairs, was cut on her back and

> received a chop wound to her head and another to her chest which injured

one

> of her lungs.

> Ranjoo's daughter, Sharon, 28, who relatives said lived close by but

usually

> stayed over on the weekends to help her mother, was chopped on her hand

and

> had one of her fingers almost severed.

> The three women were up to yesterday afternoon being treated at the San

> Fernando General Hospital. Ranjoo and Rampersad were said to be in a

serious

> condition.

> Sharon's children, Samantha, 10 and Steven, nine witnessed the horror but

> were not physically hurt. Rampersad's husband was not at home at the time

> the incident.

> The intruder robbed the family of $25,000 in jewelry and $500 in cash

before

> he grabbed Ranjoo's 20-year old deaf-mute daughter Aneesher from her bed

and

> dragged her out of the house, down a nearby track and into a waiting car.

> Police, who were summoned by neighbours, used dogs and followed the girl's

> trail up to the point where she might have been put into the car.

> Up to yesterday afternoon there had been no word from the abductors.

> Relatives who gathered at Ranjoo's house yesterday morning were reluctant

> speak to the media. One of them said although Aneesher was deaf-mute, she

> was able to communicate with her family through sign language.

> "But the people who take she might not understand what she's trying to

say,"

> he said. Family members were yesterday praying the young woman would be

> returned to them safely.

> Oropouche police are continuing investigations.