Sascha Wil­son

Re­lief quick­ly turned in­to de­spair for the fam­i­ly of Rishi Khem­chan af­ter they re­trieved his body from Venezuela and re­turned to Ch­aguara­mas on Fri­day. 

 "We reach back at 1 pm and is like a death just hap­pen. The DMO (Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer) come and the CSI (Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors) were there, putting up yel­low mark­ers," said Khem­chan's broth­er Ravi dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. 

He said the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties gave him pho­to­copies of doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing the death cer­tifi­cate, which list­ed the cause of death as trau­ma to the head with a blunt ob­ject. How­ev­er, Ravi said the po­lice took cus­tody of his broth­er's body and have in­struct­ed that an au­top­sy be done at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre next week. 

Khem­chan, 38, Heer­alal “Li­nus” Cooblal, 54, of Grand La­goon, Ma­yaro, Andy “Tall­man” George, 40, and George Joti left Guayagua­yare on Jan­u­ary 31 for a five-day fish­ing trip off Trinidad’s South Coast. Their boat was found over­turned in a Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny off­shore field off Ce­dros on Feb­ru­ary 5, the day af­ter their sched­uled re­turn.  

On Feb­ru­ary 10, fish­er­men found Khem­chan’s body tan­gled in the man­groves off Cocuina, Venezuela. The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs and the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties com­mu­ni­cat­ed and arranged for the re­turn of the body to Trinidad, so his fam­i­ly could have a fu­ner­al. Ravi ex­plained that on Fri­day around 6 am he and two oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers left from Ch­aguara­mas aboard the Coast Guard ves­sel to re­trieve his broth­er's body.  "We did not cross the bor­der. We meet the Venezue­lan of­fi­cials in a boat around 10 am, and they hand over my broth­er's body that was in a box (cof­fin)."

He said the doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing the death cer­tifi­cate, were in Span­ish, but he trans­lat­ed it. "We were think­ing that every­thing go­ing to be al­right now, when we reach back the body go­ing to a fu­ner­al home, and then we could plan his fu­ner­al," he said. How­ev­er, he said the po­lice told them "it was a po­lice mat­ter," and Khem­chan's body was tak­en to the Boodoo Fu­ner­al Home in Rio Claro to await the au­top­sy.

Lament­ing that his fam­i­ly has suf­fered enough, he said, "It is a re­al hard thing to face. In­stead of mov­ing for­ward, we're go­ing back­wards. We don't want to go through this thing again. To­day is 40 days and he not buried yet." He said Khem­chan was a me­chan­ic and the el­dest among six sib­lings. Rel­a­tives will be go­ing to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre to­mor­row.