Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

The Is­lam­ic Fa­da’il (Fu­ner­al) Ser­vices Trust has ex­pressed out­rage fol­low­ing the re­cent dis­cov­ery of a mass bur­ial site in Cu­mu­to.

Mus­lim cler­ic Imam Rasheed Karim, head of Ummah T&T and the Is­lam­ic Fa­da’il Ser­vices Trust (IF­ST), yes­ter­day said the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty is deeply con­cerned and out­raged over the dis­cov­ery, in which the bod­ies, in­clud­ing those of in­fants, ap­peared to have been dis­posed of in a pro­found­ly in­hu­mane man­ner.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has launched an ur­gent in­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter a grim dis­cov­ery at the Cu­mu­to Ceme­tery on Sat­ur­day, where two work­ers from a well-known fu­ner­al home were al­leged­ly found il­le­gal­ly dis­pos­ing of 56 bod­ies.

The re­mains are re­port­ed to in­clude 50 in­fants, four adult males and two adult fe­males.

One of the males and one of the fe­males showed signs that a post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion had been con­duct­ed. All of the adults, with the ex­cep­tion of one male, were found with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tags.

Two sus­pects, aged 18 and 25, both of By-Pass Road, Ari­ma, have been de­tained by po­lice.

Karim, in a state­ment, raised sev­er­al ur­gent ques­tions for the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, such as who au­tho­rised the re­lease of these bod­ies for dis­pos­al? Which agency or agen­cies were re­spon­si­ble for this process?

“There are far more ques­tions than an­swers, and the si­lence from those in au­thor­i­ty is deeply trou­bling,” Karim said.

“Every one of these in­di­vid­u­als was a hu­man be­ing, de­serv­ing of dig­ni­ty in both life and in death. The man­ner in which these bod­ies were treat­ed is un­ac­cept­able and goes against ba­sic hu­man, moral and eth­i­cal stan­dards.”

He added that as Is­lam­ic or­gan­i­sa­tions, Ummah T&T and IF­ST re­gard the prop­er han­dling and bur­ial of the de­ceased as a sa­cred du­ty.

“If any of the in­di­vid­u­als were Mus­lim, we would have tak­en full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure bur­ial in ac­cor­dance with Is­lam­ic rites. Like­wise, we are con­fi­dent that or­gan­i­sa­tions from oth­er faith-based com­mu­ni­ties would have come for­ward to pro­vide ap­pro­pri­ate last rites,” he said.

Karim warned that the in­ci­dent sug­gests a pos­si­ble sys­temic fail­ure and rais­es con­cerns that sim­i­lar prac­tices may have oc­curred pre­vi­ous­ly with­out pub­lic knowl­edge.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion is now call­ing for a full, trans­par­ent and in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of strict pro­to­cols to en­sure dig­ni­ty and re­spect in the han­dling of all de­ceased per­sons.