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Sunday, May 18, 2025

Defence Force Commander rubbishes Piper’s statements at CoE

by

Sharlene Rampersad
887 days ago
20221212
Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard TTCG Lieutenant Commander Michael Maharaj gives evidence during the  Commission of enquiry yesterday.

Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard TTCG Lieutenant Commander Michael Maharaj gives evidence during the Commission of enquiry yesterday.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

De­fence Force Lieu­tenant Com­man­der Michael Ma­haraj says he nev­er told Paria Fu­el’s Collin Piper that the four men trapped in a pipeline could have been dead on Feb­ru­ary 26.

In his tes­ti­mo­ny be­fore the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria div­ing tragedy yes­ter­day, Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj dis­put­ed sev­er­al state­ments made by Piper in his sworn wit­ness state­ment to the En­quiry.

He was be­ing ques­tioned by coun­sel for the Com­mis­sion, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj when he made the state­ment yes­ter­day.

The CoE was set up af­ter four LM­CS divers died in an ac­ci­dent at Paria’s Berth 6 on Feb­ru­ary 25. LM­CS claimed Paria re­fused to res­cue Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry and Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior. A fifth div­er, Christo­pher Boodram, is the lone sur­vivor.

Yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj read from Piper’s state­ment re­lat­ing to Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj.

Piper said Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj vis­it­ed the in­ci­dent com­mand team (ICT) around mid­day on Feb­ru­ary 26, a day af­ter the ac­ci­dent.

Piper said he up­dat­ed Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj about the sta­tus of the res­cue ef­forts and then they moved to a pri­vate area, where Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj told him it was un­like­ly the men were alive.

“Did you in­di­cate to him that it was un­like­ly that the divers in the pipeline were still alive? Be­cause it is un­like­ly that you would have had suf­fi­cient air to sur­vive for this long?” Ma­haraj asked.

“Ab­solute­ly not,” Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj re­spond­ed.

He ex­plained that he had vis­it­ed the ICT as part of his du­ties to re­port to the Chief of De­fence Staff on any in­ci­dents in which the De­fence Force was in­volved.

He de­nied ad­vis­ing Piper that a re­cov­ery ef­fort should be con­sid­ered.

Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj was al­so asked by Paria’s at­tor­ney Gilbert Pe­ter­son.

Pe­ter­son if he had formed any opin­ion on whether the men were alive or dead when he spoke to Piper on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

“I have no abil­i­ty to pro­nounce peo­ple alive or dead,” Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj said.

Pe­ter­son per­sist­ed, ask­ing Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj again whether he be­lieved the men could have been alive at that time.

“I asked you what you did with that view. You kept it to your­self or you told it to Mr Piper?” Pe­ter­son asked.

“When he told me about the op­tion about get­ting the wa­ter to push the peo­ple out, then I ex­pressed to him my view and the view was that I ex­pressed to him was that should this op­tion be con­sid­ered, you are ba­si­cal­ly ex­tin­guish­ing any and all hope of sur­viv­abil­i­ty and as far as I was con­cerned, there is no rea­son to say peo­ple are sur­viv­ing or not, es­pe­cial­ly when he told me that some­one who had got­ten out of the pipe spoke to oth­er peo­ple,” Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj said.

Pe­ter­son said Piper had as­sert­ed that Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj told him the op­er­a­tion should move from res­cue to re­cov­ery.

He said Paria’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed al­so al­leged that Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj told him the fam­i­lies of the miss­ing men should be in­formed that the op­er­a­tion was mov­ing from res­cue to re­cov­ery.

Lieu­tenant Ma­haraj al­so de­nied this, say­ing while he was in­tro­duced to Mo­hammed, he did not give him any ad­vice.


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