Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

De­oxyri­bonu­cle­ic acid (DNA) has con­firmed that the de­com­pos­ing body found in a man­grove in Venezuela al­most eight months ago is Rishi Khem­chan.

Now, his griev­ing rel­a­tives can fi­nal­ly give him the peace­ful send-off they have want­ed for sev­er­al months.

They are ex­pect­ing to re­ceive his body on Mon­day.

When Guardian Me­dia spoke with his sis­ter Kavi­ta on Thurs­day, she said the fam­i­ly was were in­formed by the po­lice last Fri­day that DNA tests con­firmed that the body was her broth­er.

How­ev­er, she said the of­fi­cer told them that the pathol­o­gist was on va­ca­tion and they would have wait un­til he re­turned to sign the pa­per­work be­fore the body was re­leased.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment, an of­fi­cial at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC) seemed shocked that Khem­chan’s body had not yet been re­leased to the fam­i­ly.

He said as far as he was aware, no pathol­o­gist was on va­ca­tion. Fol­low­ing this, the FSC con­tact­ed the fam­i­ly and arrange­ments were made for them to col­lect the pa­per­work to reg­is­ter his death.

The of­fi­cial said the FSC would then con­tact the fu­ner­al home to col­lect the body, most like­ly on Mon­day.

The fam­i­ly is hop­ing to have the fu­ner­al done as soon as pos­si­ble.

“We have been wait­ing so long, I just can’t be­lieve this,” Kavi­ta said when con­tact­ed last evening.

Khem­chan, 38, of Ma­yaro, Heer­alal “Li­nus” Cooblal, 54, of Grand La­goon, Ma­yaro, Andy “Tall­man” George, 40 of Va­len­cia and George Joti left Guayagua­yare on Jan­u­ary 31 for fish­ing trip. The ves­sel they were in was dis­cov­ered on Feb­ru­ary 5, and on Feb­ru­ary 11 Khem­chan’s de­com­pos­ing body was dis­cov­ered in a man­grove in Venezuela.

His rel­a­tives iden­ti­fied his body to the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties based on his cloth­ing, den­tures and phys­i­cal fea­tures. His cell­phone was al­so found. An au­top­sy was done in Venezuela and then his body was brought back to Trinidad, with a death cer­tifi­cate and oth­er doc­u­men­ta­tion on March 10. The po­lice took pos­ses­sion of his body and DNA sam­ples tak­en from his rel­a­tives on March 25.

Mean­while, search­es have ceased for the oth­er three men, and with no in­for­ma­tion on their where­abouts, there is wide­spread spec­u­la­tion that they may be dead.