“He would talk about his sexual experiences with girls”: Houseboat owner
Rakib Altaf
SRINAGAR: A young British woman was murdered allegedly by a Dutch tourist in a houseboat on the Dal Lake in Srinagar on Saturday.
Police say De-wit Richard, 43, of the Netherlands has admitted to the crime. He tried to flee the valley but was arrested at Qazigund, nearly 80 kms away from Srinagar, the main city of Kashmir valley.
Police say only the post mortem report will establish whether Sarah Elizabeth, aged 22-24 and a resident of Manchester in UK, had also been raped. They say Richard stabbed her repeatedly in the private parts, thighs and the abdomen. The knife has been seized.
Owner of the houseboat, Abdul Rahim Shoda, who lives in a house a few yards away, says he had not heard Sara’s cries. He says he found her dead only in the wee hours.
“My wife, who had woken up for morning prayers at 3:30 a.m. alerted me after she found our small shikara boat, usually tied in front of the houseboat, missing. I went inside the houseboat only to find that the foreign man was missing. The door of Sara’s room was broken, and she lay on the bed, covered in blood,” he says.
Shoda says Richard had tried to flee in the shikara. But it sank in the middle and Richard had to swim across. He somehow managed to reach the taxi stand at Tourist Reception Centre (TRC), more than a kilometre away, where he hired a taxi to leave the valley, Shoda adds.
“I rushed to the tourist police station at TRC. There I enquired from other drivers who confirmed they had seen a foreigner, in wet clothes and barefooted, boarding a taxi. I asked them for the driver’s number,” Shoda adds.
Later the police spoke to the cab driver on his cell phone and sought his cooperation in getting the tourist arrested. “He had taken only his passport and abandoned his entire luggage, even his shoes at the houseboat itself,” Bhat says.
According to a police officer, who requested anonymity, Richard told his interrogators that he is “a psychopath” and “mentally sick”.
‘Exploits’
Sarah Elizabeth had been staying in the houseboat for the past two months while Richard had checked in there only two days ago on April 4.
The houseboat owner said Richard had talked about his sexual exploits. “He told me about his experiences with girls in Nepal. He told me many things which made me feel that he was a person of bad character,” Shoda says.
“I told him to leave the houseboat, but he refused.”
Shoda says he allowed the Dutchman to stay only after he had assured him good conduct.
“But see what he did that very night,” he says, in tears. “Sara was like a daughter to my family”.
(The author is a trainee, Hindustan Times)
