KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Fire Pre­ven­tion Of­fi­cers will re­turn to the home of 69-year-old Seep­er­sad Singh this week to de­ter­mine the cause of the fire that de­stroyed his home on Sat­ur­day morn­ing and like­ly claimed his life.

Siparia and Mon Re­pos fire­fight­ers con­firmed rel­a­tives' fears that Singh was trapped in­side his apart­ment in Fyz­abad when they no­ticed a burned body while ex­tin­guish­ing the blaze. His nephew Ravi Ram­dath, 44, said the fam­i­ly did not want to spec­u­late and he is await­ing word from in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

"I got a call from my neigh­bour say­ing the house was on fire around 2:05 am. When I came down, I told him to see if my un­cle was in or out of the house. I left where I am liv­ing, and I came straight down, and when I got there, the top part of the house was al­ready burnt," Ram­dath said.

A po­lice re­port stat­ed that around 2.30 am, Cpl Nages­sar, PC Joseph and PC Ram­per­sad re­spond­ed to a re­port of a house fire at Del­hi Road, Fyz­abad and met with Ravi, who lived in the vil­lage and was the prop­er­ty own­er. He re­port­ed that he was at home around 2 am when a neigh­bour called say­ing the prop­er­ty was on fire. He ar­rived and saw the up­stairs apart­ment en­gulfed in flames and re­port­ed that Singh, who resided there, may have been trapped in­side.

FSO James and fire­fight­ers from the Siparia Fire Sta­tion part­nered with FS­SO Her­nan­dez and a crew from the Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion to ex­tin­guish the blaze. The of­fi­cers ob­served the par­tial­ly burnt body while putting out the fire.

Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Flem­ming, South West­ern Di­vi­sion Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors and de­tec­tives from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions: Re­gion Three were on the scene.

Ram­dath said the fam­i­ly was await­ing in­for­ma­tion from the Fire Pre­ven­tion Unit to as­cer­tain what caused the fire. In­ves­ti­ga­tors cor­doned off the area and will re­turn to the scene this week. He said the house had no elec­tri­cal is­sues and did not think Singh lit a can­dle or deya and for­got it. While Singh used cig­a­rettes, Ram­dath said he was not a heavy smok­er.

Ram­dath said his un­cle was a healthy pen­sion­er who was pre­vi­ous­ly self-em­ployed. Ram­dath said his un­cle nev­er had a fam­i­ly of his own, and he had planned to spend some time with him this week­end.