Five years after Bibi Shareema Gopaul and her former lover Jarvis Barry Small were sentenced to a combined total of 202 years imprisonment for the murder of her 16-year-old daughter Neesa Gopaul, an appeal in the matter will come up for hearing on Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 09:00hrs.
Following a trial at the High Court in Demerara, in March 2015, the mother and Small were found guilty of the murder of the teenager which occurred on October 2, 2010. While Gopaul was sentenced to 106 years imprisonment, Small was handed a 96 years jail sentence by Justice Navindra Singh.
Shortly after the verdict, the two killers had expressed dissatisfaction with the verdict, claiming that they were not given a fair trial.
They had accused the judge of taking a political side and accused him of admitting prejudicial evidence for the jury’s consideration.
The decomposed headless remains of the younger Gopaul, a former student of Queen’s College, was found stuffed in a suitcase in a creek along the Soesdyke/Linden Highway on October 2, 2010. Also discovered were a passport and a bank card that bore her name.
Based on reports, the suitcase was wrapped with rope and attached to dumbbells in an apparent effort to keep the young woman’s body submerged. The QC student’s was found weeks after she was reported missing from her Leonora, West Coast Demerara home.
Her cause of death was given as multiple blunt force trauma to the head.
