Grieving family expresses gratitude after killer sentenced to hang

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Al­though her fam­i­ly will for­ev­er be scarred by the bru­tal mur­ders of her sis­ter Tara Ram­sa­roop and her 14-month-old niece Sher­maya Ja­da Moti­lal, Jas­so­dra Ra­jaram yes­ter­day wept tears of re­lief that their mur­der­er had been sen­tenced to death.

An emo­tion­al Ra­jaram spoke with re­porters at her Bar­rack­pore home, one day af­ter Jus­tice Nali­ni Singh found Rishi Moti­lal, al­so known as “Cook Meat,” guilty at the end of a judge-alone tri­al.

The moth­er and child were found dead at Moti­lal’s home in Bar­rack­pore on Oc­to­ber 8, 2024. Ram­sa­roop, a moth­er of four, had been chopped mul­ti­ple times, while the ba­by’s throat had been slit. The killings oc­curred weeks af­ter Ram­sa­roop ob­tained a pro­tec­tion or­der from the po­lice against Moti­lal, due to threats and ha­rass­ment

With tears stream­ing down her face, Ra­jaram said, “I feel we get jus­tice. But not every­thing they talked about my sis­ter was the truth. I am very grate­ful and thank­ful to the judge. If I could just meet her, I would hug her and say, ‘Thanks very much for jus­tice for my sis­ter’. We nev­er got jus­tice from the po­lice.”

Ra­jaram said her sis­ter end­ed the re­la­tion­ship with Moti­lal sev­en months pri­or to her death and had made sev­er­al re­ports to the po­lice which were ig­nored.

“They (po­lice) would say that was hus­band and wife mat­ters, they will make up,” she claimed.

Sur­prised but grate­ful that the mat­ter was com­plet­ed just 16 months af­ter the mur­ders, she said, “I think as we are pray­ing peo­ple, we got jus­tice. All of my fam­i­ly - my aunts and every­one - we prayed for that mo­ment to get jus­tice...”

She added, “My sis­ter did not de­serve that. My fam­i­ly are con­tent that we got jus­tice.”

Not­ing that some fam­i­lies wait for years for jus­tice, she said she was hope­ful that oth­er mur­der tri­als would al­so have a swift end to give clo­sure to vic­tims’ fam­i­lies.

Ra­jaram, how­ev­er, was heart­bro­ken that her fam­i­ly has been de­nied ac­cess to Ram­sa­roop’s nine-year-old son, who has been stay­ing with Moti­lal’s fam­i­ly. She en­cour­aged vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­la­tion­ships to “get out.”

She said, “My sis­ter want­ed to work, achieve and ac­com­plish. She en­dured enough. She came out of it and was hap­py to build her house, sit on her step and be at peace. Not know­ing that was when her life was go­ing to end.”

Ra­jaram al­so ap­pealed to the po­lice to treat do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports se­ri­ous­ly. De­spite the out­come of the mat­ter, she was not sure whether her fam­i­ly would ever heal.

“For the rest of my life, I will be scarred. I will al­ways have a bro­ken piece in my heart. She and I were so close...It has been 16 months, and I feel it has been on­ly yes­ter­day.”

Dur­ing the tri­al, Moti­lal claimed he had been pro­voked and lat­er “blacked out.” How­ev­er, Jus­tice Singh re­ject­ed the de­fence, rul­ing that Moti­lal re­mained in con­trol of his ac­tions through­out the at­tack.

“I find that he ex­pe­ri­enced anger, hurt, jeal­ousy, frus­tra­tion and emo­tion­al dis­tress but that he re­tained the ca­pac­i­ty for pur­pose­ful and di­rect­ed ac­tion at all ma­te­r­i­al times,” Singh said.

She al­so re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion of provo­ca­tion in the killing of the child.