Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Three weeks af­ter 12-year-old Mari­ah Seenath was mur­dered, rel­a­tives, friends, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, her school­mates and oth­er con­cerned cit­i­zens gath­ered yes­ter­day for a can­dle­light vig­il, call­ing for jus­tice and re­mem­ber­ing the young girl’s life.

No one has yet been ar­rest­ed, and rel­a­tives are still wait­ing for the po­lice to dis­close any in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the cir­cum­stances that led to her death.

In an in­ter­view hours be­fore the vig­il, a rel­a­tive who did not want to be named said they were still wait­ing for the re­sults of two foren­sic tests. One is a tox­i­col­o­gy test, and the oth­er test would de­ter­mine if she suf­fered from any ill­ness­es, such as seizures.

Still wait­ing for in­for­ma­tion from the po­lice re­gard­ing Mari­ah’s death, he said, “Right now our blood is boil­ing. We want jus­tice for Mari­ah. And as far as it seems to us, it’s look­ing like we are not go­ing to get any­where close to get­ting jus­tice.”

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene to en­sure that no stone is left un­turned in find­ing jus­tice for Mari­ah.

“We call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment as well to try and as­sist and speed up the process for us to get re­sults.”

Since Mari­ah’s death—and fol­low­ing ac­cu­sa­tions made by a fe­male rel­a­tive—he said the fam­i­ly has faced cru­el and hurt­ful com­ments on so­cial me­dia. Their dai­ly lives, he added, have been af­fect­ed as peo­ple con­tin­ue to sin­gle them out and make snide re­marks.

“We can’t stop the pub­lic from talk­ing, but they are not here to see what the fam­i­ly does for the chil­dren, the dis­tance we go for the chil­dren, so they can’t jump to con­clu­sions to say we did not do this or that.”

Thank­ing Kevin Lalchan for or­gan­is­ing the vig­il, he said, “All we want is jus­tice for Mari­ah.”

Ex­plain­ing why he held the vig­il, Lalchan said there has been lit­tle na­tion­al at­ten­tion since her death, so he de­cid­ed to use his Face­book plat­form and his voice to call for jus­tice.

Not­ing that he is al­so an ac­tivist for jus­tice in the Paria Divers tragedy, he said, “While brows­ing through so­cial me­dia, this would have been af­ter Mari­ah’s death, I re­alise that it seems to be dy­ing down and the mat­ter seems to be get­ting cold, and the per­pe­tra­tor or the per­pe­tra­tors have not been found yet.”

Choos­ing yes­ter­day for the vig­il to co­in­cide with the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of the Girl Child, he said the event was not on­ly about jus­tice for Mari­ah but al­so aimed at rais­ing aware­ness about child abuse and urg­ing child pro­tec­tion au­thor­i­ties to be more proac­tive rather than re­ac­tive.

Mari­ah’s body was found around 12.50 pm on Sep­tem­ber 20, about five feet in the bush­es off a track lead­ing to the Friend­ship Vil­lage Recre­ation Ground, near her fa­ther’s and grand­moth­er’s home.

An au­top­sy re­vealed that she died from blunt force trau­ma.

She was a Form 3 stu­dent at San Fer­nan­do East Sec­ondary and a mem­ber of her school’s foot­ball and dra­ma clubs.