Jensen La Vende

Griev­ing rel­a­tives of at least 12 peo­ple killed over the week­end were turned away from the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC), St James, yes­ter­day af­ter be­ing told that no au­top­sies would be done un­til to­mor­row since none of the two con­tract­ed pathol­o­gists were avail­able.

While most of the rel­a­tives who were giv­en the bad news took it in their stride, one fu­ner­al agency, St Rose Fu­ner­al Home, was up­set by the de­lay.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian af­ter get­ting the news, St Rose Fu­ner­al Home di­rec­tor Nicholas St Rose said such de­lays should not be hap­pen­ing in an oil rich coun­try.

"We need to treat the be­reaved with more re­spect. What about the Mus­lims who want to bury to­day, they can't now? Spir­i­tu­al­ly that's not right and the sys­tem not right.

"The pow­ers that be need to do some­thing. Let some­body come in and do some­thing. It is em­bar­rass­ing. On top of that no rea­son was giv­en why all the post-mortems were put off un­til Wednes­day, that wrong man," he said.

One such af­fect­ed mem­ber of the Mus­lim faith was Dan­ny "Fats" Siew­nar­ine, whose wife Ashan­ti De­bidin was chopped to death on Sat­ur­day at their Princes Town home.

Siew­nar­ine told the T&T Guardian he was told the au­top­sy would be done on Wednes­day and was dis­gust­ed by this.

As a prac­tic­ing Mus­lim, he said the Sanat al-Janazah (Mus­lim fu­ner­al last rites) is sup­posed to take place as soon as pos­si­ble and the de­lay in the au­top­sy was pre­vent­ing that.

An agent of the Shyam Fu­ner­al Home, which most­ly con­ducts Mus­lim fu­ner­als, said if the bod­ies were of ac­ci­dent vic­tims they could have or­gan­ised to trans­fer them to a hos­pi­tal and have a mor­ti­cian there con­duct them, rather than wait­ing a fur­ther two days but be­cause they were the bod­ies of mur­der vic­tims noth­ing could be done.

Oth­er fu­ner­al homes ques­tioned whether there was suf­fi­cient room for the bod­ies pil­ing up at the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day.

By noon there were 12 bod­ies, two de­com­pos­ing, at the cen­tre await­ing post-mortems while three more were said to be on the way.

The FSC has been un­der­staffed since the con­tract of foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov ex­pired in Jan­u­ary.

Min­is­ter up­set

In an in­ter­view last month, Alexan­drov told the T&T Guardian that he was told that the de­lay in hir­ing an­oth­er pathol­o­gist to per­form au­top­sies was ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing the oth­er two pathol­o­gists – Dr Hughvon des Vi­gnes and Dr East­lyn Mc Don­ald-Bur­ris – who now work every oth­er week.

Dr Mc Don­ald-Bur­ris, the T&T Guardian was told, has been the on­ly pathol­o­gist as­signed to the FSC for the past month as Dr Des Vi­gnes was on a month-long va­ca­tion.

Ques­tioned about the lack of pathol­o­gists at the FSC yes­ter­day, line min­is­ter Jus­tice Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har said he was not sure what was the rea­son be­hind the two-day de­lay in con­duct­ing au­top­sies.

He said, how­ev­er, that the in­struc­tions had been giv­en to find a re­place­ment pathol­o­gist in the wake of Alexan­drov's de­par­ture.

"I know they have gone through the process and we have to re­spect the process and it has to be sort­ed out," Ra­mad­har said, adding the re-hir­ing of Alexan­drov has been ag­i­tat­ing his mind for some time as the se­lec­tion of a pathol­o­gist, Alexan­drov or oth­er­wise, should have been com­plet­ed by now.