Roger Pardayan of Boucherville passed away on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. He was sentenced to death in February 1986 by Judge Rajsoomer Lallah. Roger Pardaillan de Boucherville left the Central Prison on Saturday, February 19, 2011 after more than a quarter century. In January 2009, the Supreme Court decided that he would be released on February 19, 2011, 25 years after his conviction.
He had been sent to prison in 1986 for murdering his sister-in-law’s cab driver two years earlier. At the age of 53, he was arrested in January 1984 for the murder of the cab driver of his sister-in-law, Solange de Boucherville. He was accused of having stabbed Sooreeadoo Jodhun on January 5 before burying her body on the beach of Dilo Pourri, in Le Morne.
When the body was discovered almost 14 days later, he became the number one suspect. Since his incarceration, Roger de Boucherville has never stopped claiming his innocence, recalling that Serge Laval Lourdes had retracted his statement. He then implicated an escaped prisoner named Jocelyn Marmite in the murder of the cab driver.
On death row, Roger de Boucherville saw a glimmer of hope in 1995 when the Mauritian Social Democratic Party (PMSD) entered the government. Sir Maurice Rault demanded the repeal of the death penalty in order to become Minister of Justice, and his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
From then on, the prisoner took legal action to have his sentence reduced. He turned to the Queen’s Privy Council, which ruled that life imprisonment is unconstitutional. The Full Bench of the Supreme Court then considered his case and set his sentence at 25 years in prison. Prior to his life sentence, he was in and out of prison several times for various offenses. His brother was also a regular resident of the Beau-Bassin prison.
