There is no dis­put­ing that some­thing was miss­ing from the Port-of-Spain Sec­ond Crim­i­nal Court where the Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man mur­der tri­al was set to re­sume yes­ter­day.There was no laugh­ter, smiles or the friend­ly ban­ter among at­tor­neys which usu­al­ly pre­ced­ed dai­ly hear­ings of the high-pro­file tri­al.In­stead lawyers hud­dled to­geth­er in small groups through­out the cor­ri­dors of the Hall of Jus­tice as they qui­et­ly dis­cussed and con­soled each oth­er over the bru­tal and shock­ing mur­der of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal in Wood­brook ear­ly on Sun­day.

Even court re­porters seemed af­fect­ed by the som­bre and pen­sive mood as they dis­cussed their re­la­tion­ship with the much-loved at­tor­ney and at­tempt­ed to come to terms with the fact that her al­most dai­ly, friend­ly, yet frank dis­cus­sions on cur­rent af­fairs with them would no longer oc­cur.When the case was even­tu­al­ly called by jus­tice Mal­colm Holdip around 10.30 am, me­dia per­son­nel were un­ex­pect­ed­ly barred from en­try by Ju­di­cia­ry se­cu­ri­ty staff at a makeshift check­point at the en­trance of the court.With­in min­utes, grief-strick­en at­tor­neys, with their heads bowed, be­gan trick­ling out of the court­room in sin­gle file.

Recog­nis­ing the er­ror, the Ju­di­cia­ry's Court Pro­to­col and In­for­ma­tion Unit sup­plied re­porters with an au­dio record­ing and a tran­script of the pro­ceed­ings, in which Holdip dealt specif­i­cal­ly with the sched­ul­ing of the tri­al, in light of the dev­as­tat­ing news. The tran­script showed the first per­son to of­fi­cial­ly an­nounce the in­ci­dent to the ju­ry was se­nior state at­tor­ney Joy Balka­ran, who could not hold back her tears as she told the court See­ta­hal would no longer be part of the pros­e­cu­tion team.Holdip, who spoke im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter, said he un­der­stood pros­e­cu­tors who worked along­side See­ta­hal would be emo­tion­al­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly trau­ma­tised by the in­ci­dent.

He then told the 12-mem­ber ju­ry the case would have to be ad­journed to next Mon­day at 9 am to al­low See­ta­hal's col­leagues to grieve and at­tend her fu­ner­al on Thurs­day."I am tak­ing the ini­tia­tive to un­der­stand that they would need some time to, in fact, re­con­sti­tute their po­si­tion, their strate­gies, le­gal and oth­er­wise," Holdip said.He al­so sug­gest­ed that mem­bers of the de­fence team were al­so try­ing to cope with the news and would al­so agree with the short ad­journ­ment."I don't think any­one of us have that sort of Spar­tan at­ti­tude that we would just pick up our­selves and con­tin­ue in the light of what has hap­pened," Holdip said.See­ta­hal was one of three Se­nior Coun­sel who be­gan lead­ing ev­i­dence when the tri­al be­gan in late March.The oth­er two–Is­rael Khan and Gilbert Pe­ter­son–were each ac­com­pa­nied by a plain­clothes po­lice of­fi­cer as they en­tered and left the Knox Street cour­t­house yes­ter­day.Sources said the po­lice pro­tec­tion for pros­e­cu­tors was in­sti­tut­ed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter news of See­ta­hal's mur­der be­came pub­lic. There was al­so an in­creased po­lice pres­ence out­side the Hall of Jus­tice, with teams of heav­i­ly-armed of­fi­cers at street cor­ners around the build­ing.