JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Three more peo­ple, in­clud­ing a woman, have been ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to the at­tempt­ed il­le­gal dis­pos­al of 56 hu­man re­mains.

The three were held be­tween Sat­ur­day and yes­ter­day, af­ter two pur­port­ed fu­ner­al home work­ers were ar­rest­ed on Sat­ur­day.

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the dis­cov­ery of the bod­ies at the Cu­mu­to Ceme­tery af­ter two men, 18 and 25, were found at­tempt­ing to bury the re­mains. Of the six adults found among the re­mains, two were women and four were men.

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 10.10 am on Sat­ur­day, a gar­den­er liv­ing close to the ceme­tery was out test­ing his air ri­fle and ob­served the sus­pects dig­ging a grave. The men re­port­ed­ly told po­lice they were hired to bury the bod­ies.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the po­lice had fin­ger­print­ed the six adults as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues.

“Of­fi­cers of the North­ern North Di­vi­sion Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit have fin­ger­print­ed the six adult bod­ies re­cov­ered as part of the process to ver­i­fy iden­ti­ties,” Gue­var­ro said, as­sur­ing that he would up­date the pub­lic as more in­for­ma­tion be­comes avail­able.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers to con­firm whether the 50 in­fants were full-term ba­bies or, as three doc­tors sus­pect, were foe­tus­es from mis­car­riages and oth­er deaths of foe­tus­es that did not make it to full term.

Ac­cord­ing to ob­ste­tri­cian and gy­nae­col­o­gist Dr Sherene Kalloo, it is un­like­ly that the 50 in­fants were full-term ba­bies.

“I do not be­lieve that di­ag­no­sis of hav­ing a ba­by af­ter the age of 26 weeks would re­sult in the dis­pos­al of which is be­ing de­scribed, be­cause this is now af­ter 26 weeks, which has to be reg­is­tered as a birth and then if the ba­by dies, then a death cer­tifi­cate will have to be is­sued.”

This was sup­port­ed by for­mer di­rec­tor of Women’s Health at the Min­istry of Health Dr Sir­jus­ingh, who ex­plained that 28 weeks and above is con­sid­ered a birth, which dic­tates that the child must be reg­is­tered and a death cer­tifi­cate is­sued.

Al­so con­tact­ed, for­mer health min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan said when stor­age at hos­pi­tal morgues are at ca­pac­i­ty, fu­ner­al homes are con­tact­ed to dis­pose of un­claimed bod­ies. This is done af­ter no­tices are placed in the news­pa­per and oth­er means to claim the dead. Af­ter that, he said the bod­ies are dis­posed of through bur­ial or in­cin­er­a­tion.

“In­cin­er­a­tion is done by pri­vate nurs­ing homes, pri­vate fu­ner­al homes, and it is ex­treme­ly ex­pen­sive if you are go­ing to dis­pose of each per­son prop­er­ly. So, it is a mass dis­pos­al to save costs. And the hos­pi­tal tends to have spe­cif­ic fu­ner­al homes where they iden­ti­fy to bury these bod­ies. And that is the bot­tom line,” Khan said.

How­ev­er, San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ken­wyn Phillip has said no ap­proval was grant­ed for the in­ter­ments and there­fore any bur­ial car­ried out with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion is un­law­ful and breach­es reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing ceme­tery op­er­a­tions.

Mean­while, di­rec­tor of the St Rose Fu­ner­al Home, Nicholas St Rose, told CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew that such buri­als are nor­mal­ly sanc­tioned by the Friend­ly So­ci­eties but ques­tioned why no ap­provals were giv­en.

Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste, who has over­sight of the reg­is­trar of the Friend­ly So­ci­eties, said he is ex­pect­ing a re­port on the mat­ter some­time to­day and will pro­vide an up­date.