Ryan Ba­choo

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Trau­ma­tised. That is how lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the sev­en Mathu­ra sib­lings de­scribed their state yes­ter­day, in a first pub­lic state­ment since the dis­cov­ery of their sis­ter’s (Han­nah Mathu­ra) skele­tal re­mains in a shal­low grave on Tues­day.

“Giv­en the lev­el of pub­lic in­ter­est in the mat­ter, and giv­en the lev­el of ex­po­sure in the me­dia, the chil­dren are gen­uine­ly con­cerned about their pri­va­cy. This is why one of the things we are ask­ing for is for the me­dia and the pub­lic to re­spect their pri­va­cy,” lawyer San­jiv Bood­hu said.

Bood­hu and Sasha Singh are rep­re­sent­ing the sev­en chil­dren and spoke to the me­dia out­side the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion, be­fore tak­ing a few of the chil­dren, in­clud­ing a mi­nor, in­to the sta­tion for in­ter­views by in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers.

The lawyers ap­pealed for pri­va­cy for the sib­lings, who are be­ing kept at safe lo­ca­tions across the coun­try, not­ing the pub­lic dis­cus­sion was caus­ing fur­ther emo­tion­al stress on the sib­lings.

The lawyers, how­ev­er, shed lit­tle light on the many ques­tions that re­main unan­swered in the af­ter­math of the dis­cov­ery of Han­nah’s body in a foot-deep grave in the back yard of the fam­i­ly’s prop­er­ty.

When asked whether a re­port of abuse was made to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, Bood­hu would on­ly say, “We are here, to­day, to as­sist the po­lice first and fore­most. As our in­ter­ac­tion with the chil­dren con­tin­ues, we will be in a po­si­tion to ad­dress those is­sues as time goes by.”

When pressed on whether the chil­dren are now part of the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, hav­ing vol­un­tar­i­ly or in­vol­un­tar­i­ly been in­volved, Bood­hu said, “At this stage, we have not been in­formed that that is the case.”

The lawyers de­clined to re­veal any of the ages of the chil­dren.

Asked about adult chil­dren in the home not re­port­ing the death of Han­nah to the po­lice, they said, “The on­ly in­for­ma­tion that was re­vealed to us was that they, too, are sur­prised that there is in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing about an au­top­sy re­port but we have not seen one and nei­ther have they.”

When pressed on whether the chil­dren had giv­en a rea­son why no one re­port­ed the death of their sis­ter to the po­lice, Bood­hu said, “That is the crux of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. That is yet to be de­ter­mined.”

How­ev­er, fam­i­ly sources who spoke to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day sug­gest­ed that Han­nah’s death could have been avoid­ed.

They said mul­ti­ple ap­peals for help from the au­thor­i­ties fell on deaf ears, and while not specif­i­cal­ly blam­ing any­one, in­clud­ing po­lice, they said there was a no­table gap be­tween re­port­ing and ac­tion in Han­nah’s case.

One source told Guardian Me­dia the chil­dren are sur­vivors and vic­tims in this sit­u­a­tion, even though some of them were adults. They said this is not the way they saw a res­o­lu­tion com­ing about in this sit­u­a­tion, where the chil­dren are now forced to pro­vide ev­i­dence.

“The most plau­si­ble way would have been if the (main) sus­pect had died and we would not have been fear­ful of any sort of reper­cus­sions,” the source said.

With the vic­tim’s moth­er and fa­ther cur­rent­ly in cus­tody, the lawyers de­lib­er­ate­ly stayed away from com­ment­ing on the ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion. How­ev­er, it was re­vealed that the Mathu­ra chil­dren were ful­ly co-op­er­at­ing with po­lice.

The fam­i­ly, which has be­come the fo­cus of in­tense pub­lic scruti­ny in re­cent days, is al­so said to be weigh­ing its le­gal op­tions.

At the same time, they are ap­peal­ing for good sense to pre­vail in the coun­try, with some fam­i­ly mem­bers ex­press­ing con­cern for their per­son­al safe­ty, due to the neg­a­tive com­ments be­ing hurled at them, main­ly through so­cial me­dia.

Yes­ter­day, sources, who con­firmed re­ports of phys­i­cal abuse in the Mathu­ra home, al­so al­lud­ed to a bit­ter prop­er­ty fight, say­ing there were peo­ple who want­ed “to buss” the par­ents’ throats in or­der to in­her­it the sprawl­ing prop­er­ty at Bu­tu Road, Val­sayn, where Han­nah’s body was buried for sev­en years.

As a re­sult, they said while ac­counts shared to date by neigh­bours have been most­ly ac­cu­rate, some close rel­a­tives have been ly­ing and bent on shar­ing the “most ex­ac­er­bat­ed” ver­sion of the fam­i­ly’s sto­ry.

The big ques­tion re­mains, who was Han­nah Mathu­ra? While the lawyers could pro­vide no pic­ture of the vic­tim, they could give no in­for­ma­tion on who she was, in­clud­ing the school she at­tend­ed. No im­age of her has al­so showed up on so­cial me­dia, al­though the news of her death has been in cir­cu­la­tion for al­most a week.