Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor – In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Since the shock­ing dis­cov­ery of his fa­ther’s body down a precipice at his Cunu­pia farm nine weeks ago, Rishi Ma­hadeo has knocked on every sin­gle door seek­ing jus­tice for him.

To date, no homi­cide of­fi­cer has been as­signed to in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances of how his fa­ther, Ramesh Ma­hadeo, died.

Ramesh, 71, a farmer for the past 20 years, was found in the pond of his ten-acre farm on April 15 by one of his em­ploy­ees.

At the time, the po­lice had ruled his death as a sus­pect­ed drown­ing.

Ma­hadeo, 43, told the Sun­day Guardian that he had to fight to have a prop­er au­top­sy done and to get the po­lice to take his fa­ther’s death se­ri­ous­ly.

He has be­come frus­trat­ed and dis­il­lu­sioned by the process.

Ma­hadeo, the coun­try man­ag­er for Cham­pi­on X, a ser­vice com­pa­ny in the en­er­gy sec­tor, ob­served that with all his con­nec­tions and friends, he has not made any progress in un­cov­er­ing the truth of his fa­ther’s death.

“The sys­tem failed us. And even the sys­tem to keep that sys­tem in check is fail­ing us al­so. It’s a re­al­ly sad sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

On Wednes­day evening, the BBC host­ed World Ques­tions at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um.

Ma­hadeo, who at­tend­ed the pub­lic event, raised the han­dling of his fa­ther’s death.

His ques­tion was the first to be­gin the de­bate.

He told the pan­el: “My fa­ther was a farmer plagued by crime un­til he was mur­dered on his farm two months ago. To date, no homi­cide de­tec­tive has been as­signed to us. Why have the past and present gov­ern­ments and the Po­lice Ser­vice failed us on crime?”

Ramesh Mahadeo’s body was found in a pond down a precipice at his ten-acre farm in Cunupia on April 15.

Ramesh Ma­hadeo’s death

On April 15, Ma­hadeo re­ceived word that his fa­ther’s body had been found.

His broth­er, Shi­va, was the first to alert him and his two sis­ters—Kshama and Re­na Ma­hadeo–about the in­ci­dent.

Ma­hadeo said that all his fa­ther’s be­long­ings—his wal­let and oth­er items—were found at the side of the precipice.

The items miss­ing were his mon­ey and his reg­is­tered firearm.

Ma­hadeo said on the first en­counter, the po­lice clas­si­fied his fa­ther’s death as an ac­ci­den­tal drown­ing.

“In the farm, there is a precipice. It’s a 12-foot drop. So he was found there en­tan­gled in the roots. All his stuff was on the side—a piece of iron, his wal­let, his phone, a mul­ti­tool which he had. His firearm and his mon­ey were miss­ing,” he said.

He said the dis­cov­ery was made at mid­day and of­fi­cers from the TTPS, am­bu­lance, and the Fire Ser­vice came to the farm.

He lament­ed that the Fire Ser­vice did not want to re­trieve the body and let the un­der­tak­ers re­trieve it.

“We don’t know why. The un­der­tak­ers are not trained to wear a har­ness, they are not trained to use the body cage to bring it up. It was a to­tal mess and the un­der­tak­ers took about six hours to re­trieve the body,” he re­called.

Fol­low­ing this, Ma­hadeo said the coun­ty’s Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer (DMO) came and said that he did not see any marks of vi­o­lence.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, those things would be more vi­su­al—no stab wounds, no gun­shots or no bloody face,” he said.

Ma­hadeo al­leged that the se­nior of­fi­cer at the time made every­one pack up and leave.

He said the next day they tried to de­ter­mine whether the body would be sent to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre but it was the in­ter­ven­tion of a fam­i­ly friend who helped them get the body to ‘Foren­sics’ to do an au­top­sy.

“It took a while for the body to come, maybe four or five days be­cause the first time the po­lice weren’t there and then they sent it again. Just to sched­ule the thing was al­so dif­fi­cult. It took about a week,” he said.

The au­top­sy re­vealed that he died from “blunt force in­jury to head, neck and chest as­so­ci­at­ed with com­pres­sion to neck.”

Ma­hadeo ex­plained while they were busy try­ing to get the au­top­sy to de­ter­mine the cause of death, the po­lice were more fo­cused on the lost firearm.

“They ac­tu­al­ly sent the Coast Guard in­side the pond to try to find it. They came a few days af­ter to col­lect the shot­gun. Every­thing was about the firearm. No­body was con­cerned about my dad’s death or how he died. They want­ed to find the firearm which tells me they were more ac­count­able for a firearm than a death. They nev­er found it,” he said.

He said that when the re­sults of the au­top­sy were shared with the po­lice, it was on­ly then they com­piled a file and sent it on to homi­cide.

“It’s been weeks now. No­body took cam­era footage. No­body asked for his phone to read through mes­sages. No­body is ask­ing ques­tions,” he said frus­trat­ed­ly.

Slow sys­tems

Ma­hadeo said that based on mes­sages found on his fa­ther’s phone, peo­ple were threat­en­ing him.

“Time is pass­ing. The longer time pass­es, the hard­er it is to solve,” he said.

Dis­il­lu­sioned by the pace of the TTPS, on May 15, one month af­ter Ramesh’s death, Ma­hadeo went to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) to make a re­port about the mat­ter.

“They too said some­one would call and as­sign an in­ves­ti­ga­tor but no one has called,” he said.

“I have used all my con­tacts to try and get peo­ple to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter but no­body’s re­al­ly tak­ing us on. I don’t even know if it can be clas­si­fied as mur­der. All I know is that it is lost in the sys­tem,” he said.

The PCA con­firmed that Ma­hadeo did make a re­port and that the mat­ter was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

The Sun­day Guardian spoke to the two of­fi­cers at Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion who ex­plained that the mat­ter has been for­ward­ed to homi­cide.

“It is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. You have to ap­pre­ci­ate that these things take time. They can­not be rushed. The file has been sub­mit­ted to homi­cide. It’s not that noth­ing is be­ing done,” the of­fi­cer said.

Pro­tect­ing farm­ers

Ma­hadeo de­scribed his fa­ther as “quite a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man.”

A for­mer bak­ing spe­cial­ist at Kiss, he toiled the land for the past 20 years.

“He spe­cialised in Mey­ers lemons which he sold to ma­jor restau­rants in T&T,” he said.

He ob­served that the fam­i­ly was a “pri­vate” one and telling their sto­ry to the me­dia was a last re­sort as they felt they had no oth­er op­tion.

He ob­served that the Gov­ern­ment of the day had called on the pop­u­la­tion to get in­to agri­cul­ture but had failed to pro­tect farm­ers.

“My dad went to all their train­ing pro­grammes and got seeds from them. I mean, they do have an okay pro­gramme to help farm­ers start up, but there’s noth­ing there to pro­tect them. Two years ago, some­body went and stole all his av­o­ca­dos, and it did some­thing to the trees and the trees nev­er bore again. Nev­er. It af­fect­ed his rev­enue. Imag­ine, farm­ers have to pro­tect them­selves,” he said.

Ma­hadeo said that de­pend­ing on the day, his fa­ther would have more cash on him to pay dai­ly paid work­ers.

“Peo­ple were al­ways steal­ing. He would go there in the night with his shot­gun and would catch peo­ple and have to call the po­lice. But he would have to do it. Po­lice won’t help. They fail to pro­tect farm­ers. They fail to in­ves­ti­gate mur­ders,” he said.

Ma­hadeo’s ques­tion on crime first on BBC World Ser­vice

Yes­ter­day, the BBC pre­miered its World Ques­tions pro­gramme which was record­ed in T&T last Wednes­day.

It was host­ed by the BBC’s Jon­ny Dy­mond and fea­tured En­er­gy Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, Op­po­si­tion MP Ani­ta Haynes, Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs and CEO of the He­roes Foun­da­tion Lawrence Ar­joon.

Ma­hadeo’s ques­tion on why past and present gov­ern­ments and the TTPS failed to ad­dress crime was the first.

“The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty falls to who­ev­er is the Gov­ern­ment in pow­er,” Young ad­mit­ted.

“I can as­sure you we are putting a lot of re­sources be­hind it. Are we where we need to be? Ab­solute­ly not,” he said.

“Crime is some­thing that is af­fect­ing every­where in the world ... but none of us wants to hear that. What are we do­ing about deal­ing with it right here in Trinidad and To­ba­go? We are try­ing to em­ploy as much tech­nol­o­gy as pos­si­ble, we are try­ing to boost the morale of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. It is some­thing that is a top pri­or­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment.”

In re­sponse, Haynes said as a cit­i­zen it had been dif­fi­cult in the last few years to be look­ing on at the es­ca­lat­ing crime wave.

“We are al­ready afraid. But what we aren’t hear­ing is that with the $5 bil­lion put to­wards na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, or all of the in­ter­ven­tions that are be­ing pro­posed, we nev­er hear at the end of the year or the end of a stip­u­lat­ed pe­ri­od any ac­knowl­edg­ment of what worked, what did not work or what could work bet­ter if we need cer­tain im­prove­ments,” she said.

Attzs ex­pressed con­cern that the TTPS was seen as a panacea.

“I think that is not a healthy ap­proach. The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is an in­sti­tu­tion and un­less we look at whether or not that in­sti­tu­tion is ap­pro­pri­ate­ly re­sourced, I mean both in terms of their hu­man re­sources and fi­nan­cial re­sources etc, then they will re­al­ly not be equipped to ad­dress the kinds of chal­lenges that we are see­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

“It is very ap­par­ent that the na­ture of crime has changed and there­fore your in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work has to be one that adapts to suit that chang­ing dy­nam­ic. And it is not sim­ply a ques­tion about a bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion” Attzs added.

Ar­joon said hon­esty, trust and mean­ing­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion are crit­i­cal to build­ing a safe and sus­tain­able so­ci­ety.

“We do not have a so­ci­ety that trusts. And that is me be­ing hon­est. And it starts from our lead­er­ship come straight down,” he said

In re­sponse, Ma­hadeo told the au­di­ence his view on crime: “I think it has a lot to do with cor­rup­tion in the Po­lice Ser­vice.”