SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Rel­a­tives of Ch­agua­nas mur­der vic­tim Ken­neth Singh, 45, are dis­gust­ed at the way they were treat­ed at the mor­tu­ary of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Singh's cousin Dave Per­sad, chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, has writ­ten a let­ter of com­plaint to Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan. Singh, who lived at Ac­cess Street, Ch­agua­nas, with his el­der­ly par­ents Dulip and Lily Singh, was found dead on Sun­day morn­ing at Cam­den Road, Cou­va, in the vicin­i­ty of the Par­adise Ho­tel.

Per­sad said at around noon on Sun­day he was told a body had been found in the Mc Bean area and it might be his rel­a­tive.

He said he called a se­nior of­fi­cer at the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion to in­quire about the body found in Cou­va. He was told the body was at the San Fer­nan­do Mor­tu­ary and he should go there to see if he could iden­ti­fy it as his rel­a­tive. Per­sad said arrange­ments were made for Sergeant Bruce of the San Fer­nan­do CID to ac­com­pa­ny him, along with a re­tired se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent who hap­pened to be vis­it­ing his home at the time.

Per­sad said he spent three hours at the mor­tu­ary wait­ing to view the body. "I was left stand­ing out­side the doors of the morgue with the re­tired of­fi­cer while the sergeant went to lo­cate the at­ten­dant. Af­ter some 45 min­utes, the sergeant re­turned alone, shak­ing his head in dis­be­lief and de­clared "bu­reau­cra­cy." The ma­tron, he re­port­ed, in­sist­ed that the pol­i­cy was that the doors could not be opened to view the body, but on­ly to re­ceive bod­ies." Per­sad said he spoke with se­nior of­fi­cials at the hos­pi­tal who con­firmed that it was the pol­i­cy.

He said, "I plead­ed that some­thing must be wrong with this pol­i­cy be­cause if the po­lice are al­lowed to view the body and it is de­ter­mined to be my rel­a­tive, two ma­jor things will hap­pen." "I in­sist­ed we were talk­ing mur­der and they may very well be pre­vent­ing and/or ob­struct­ing a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. This ap­peared to make sense and the ma­tron, ably as­sist­ed by her ju­niors, cho­rused, 'but we can­not change the pol­i­cy to­day'. "I was told to po­lite­ly ex­it the of­fice with the sergeant and they in­sist­ed, for the umpteenth time, we have to re­turn at 10 the fol­low­ing morn­ing." Per­sad said the Min­is­ter of Health was con­tact­ed and he then in­ter­vened.

"The CEO of the SWRHA came and caused the doors to be opened. I en­tered the morgue and in the pres­ence of the sergeant I iden­ti­fied the body as my miss­ing rel­a­tive. This took less than ten min­utes.

"It was now ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.45 pm. I in­formed the rel­a­tives and the po­lice were im­me­di­ate­ly able to be­gin in­ves­ti­gat­ing cer­tain leads."