Derek Achong

When the mur­der tri­al of busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man be­gan in March this year, the pros­e­cu­tion con­tend­ed that she was held cap­tive at a house at La Puer­ta, Diego Mar­tin, for sev­er­al days be­fore be­ing killed and dis­mem­bered on a pool ta­ble, three days af­ter Christ­mas 2006.But yes­ter­day a se­nior po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tor ad­mit­ted that he did not no­tice any­thing sus­pi­cious about the pool ta­ble when he led a raid on the house ear­ly in the fol­low­ing Jan­u­ary, which led to the ar­rest of three of the 12 men on tri­al.

Homi­cide de­tec­tive Supt An­tho­ny James made the ad­mis­sion while be­ing cross-ex­am­ined by de­fence at­tor­neys, who spent yes­ter­day's hear­ing prob­ing whether prop­er po­lice pro­ce­dure was fol­lowed dur­ing the raid.Al­though James claimed that when he and his col­leagues raid­ed the house at La Puer­ta Av­enue, they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the busi­ness­woman's kid­nap­ping and not her even­tu­al mur­der, he ad­mit­ted he would have no­ticed if he had seen blood or any­thing strange on the pool ta­ble.

De­fence at­tor­ney Mario Mer­ritt took is­sue with his claim that in­ves­ti­ga­tors were not in­ves­ti­gat­ing Naipaul-Cool­man's mur­der when they did the search by ask­ing why ca­dav­er snif­fer dogs were on the scene.James said he could not shed any light on the pres­ence of the dogs as he was on­ly in charge of search­ing the one-storey red-brick house.Asked by Mer­ritt, who is rep­re­sent­ing three of the ac­cused men, if he smelt any foul scent or that of bleach com­ing from the ta­ble, he said: "I de­tect­ed noth­ing while I was con­duct­ing the search."

Mer­ritt: "There was no in­di­ca­tion that it was used as a meat board to cut up a hu­man body?"

James: "I can­not say."

At the start of his tes­ti­mo­ny on Mon­day, James told the court that dur­ing a sec­ond raid at the same house sev­er­al months lat­er, in May, he no­ticed the pool ta­ble and oth­er items were miss­ing.James was al­so quizzed on an ap­par­ent dis­crep­an­cy in the la­belling of a po­lice ev­i­dence bag used to store a roll of duct tape which was al­so al­leged­ly found in the house.

Mer­ritt, in his bid to raise the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the tape was plant­ed by po­lice, point­ed out that the of­fi­cer who found it failed to sign and date the ev­i­dence bag, which on­ly bore his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber and ini­tials.Af­ter ex­am­in­ing the bag, James ac­knowl­edged that Mer­ritt's ob­ser­va­tion was cor­rect.James is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue his tes­ti­mo­ny be­fore Jus­tice Mal­colm Holdip this morn­ing.