RALPH BAN­WARIE

Of­fi­cials of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion were forced to per­form the first ex­huma­tion of a body in the re­gion yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, the rea­son was an ex­tra­or­di­nary one.

The move was ini­ti­at­ed by the fam­i­ly of de­ceased Chan­routie Boodoo, who sought per­mis­sion to ex­hume her body over fear that rob­bers had loot­ed her grave to steal the heir­loom jew­ellery she was buried with and her cof­fin, which was gold-plat­ed.

Boodoo was buried on March 2 at the ceme­tery at Fos­ter Road, San­gre Grande. She died in Eng­land on Feb­ru­ary 4.

How­ev­er, since then rel­a­tive had been re­ceiv­ing re­ports that sev­er­al peo­ple had been seen around the grave site in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing and on more than one oc­ca­sion. As such, they feared her grave may have been dug up, her cof­fin tam­pered with and the items, worth thou­sands of dol­lars, stolen.

Armed with a li­cence for an ex­huma­tion, un­der the Bur­ial Grounds Act. Chap­ter 30:50, Sec­tion 12, Boodoo’s hus­band Cor­nelus O’Donell, of Eng­land, sis­ter Dassie Mar­tin and niece Be­lin­da Mar­tin turned up at the ceme­tery yes­ter­day on a fact-find­ing mis­sion to ease their con­cerns.

They were ac­com­pa­nied by In­sp Sawak Baran, PCs Bosland, Ali, Thomas and De­les, of San­gre Grande Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Health Rodell Mo­hammed, Pub­lic Health Of­fi­cer Ne­sha Man­ick, Coun­ty Su­per­in­ten­dent Sat­nar­ine Singh, SGRC CEO Di­an­na Lakhan and lat­er on SGRC chair­man Ter­ry Ron­don.

Ceme­tery keep­er Jameel Joseph joined in to wit­ness as gravedig­gers Wen­dell Sama­roo, Ju­nior Gar­cia be­gan the ex­huma­tion process, as he (Joseph) was keen to find out if such an act had been car­ried out on the prop­er­ty un­der his watch.

Sama­roo and Gar­cia start­ed the dig­ging around and fi­nal­ly fin­ished the process hours lat­er. How­ev­er, the grave dig­gers en­coun­tered wa­ter at the bot­tom and a sewage truck was called in to siphon out the mud­dy con­tents.

But when Boodoo’s cof­fin was tak­en out and its con­tents ex­am­ined, every­thing was found to be in­tact. Rel­a­tives ver­i­fied every­thing be­fore the cof­fin was re­turned to its rest­ing place and the grave filled back up with earth. Af­ter­wards, SGRC CEO Lakhan con­firmed all the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments were sub­mit­ted and the cost paid by the fam­i­ly to con­duct the ex­huma­tion, adding the li­cence was grant­ed by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein.

She added that an ex­huma­tion was very un­usu­al and in­ter­est­ing but was hap­py they were able to do every­thing to the sat­is­fac­tion of Boodoo’s rel­a­tives and noth­ing was miss­ing.

Ron­don al­so told the T&T Guardian it was the first time he had heard of and wit­nessed an ex­huma­tion in the re­gion.