An in­ter­nal po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been or­dered in­to the deaths of crim­i­nals Joel Bal­con and An­drew Mor­ris, two of the prime sus­pects in the mur­der of 23-year-old An­drea Bharatt who was kid­napped on Feb­ru­ary 29 and her body found six days lat­er dumped off a precipice in the Heights of Aripo.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands from se­nior po­lice sources that two Act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dents of Po­lice have been man­dat­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the men's deaths fol­low­ing the find­ings of their au­top­sies last week. This is the sec­ond in­ves­ti­ga­tion which has been launched in­to the men's death; the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­it (PCA) ini­ti­at­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the deaths last week.

ACP for the North­ern Di­vi­sion Andy Bel­fon would have man­dat­ed the sec­ond in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands. "It's stan­dard pro­ce­dure when some­one dies in po­lice cus­tody for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be done," a se­nior homi­cide source said. Be­cause the men died in that di­vi­sion, the ACP of that par­tic­u­lar di­vi­sion can or­der the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The probe in­to their deaths is ex­pect­ed to start to­mor­row, ac­cord­ing to well-placed sources.

The source said that the find­ings of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion which is ex­pect­ed to take close to three weeks will like­ly be sent to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. "I ex­pect the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) may have some over­sight while the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) do their in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion," a homi­cide source said.

Mor­ris, who was known to the po­lice and was al­so a known drug sell­er in Tumpuna, Ari­ma, where he lived, was de­tained by of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) on Jan­u­ary 31, and his fam­i­ly al­leged he was beat­en in their pres­ence be­fore be­ing tak­en away. The fol­low­ing day Mor­ris died at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said that Mor­ris was sick­ly and had col­lapsed and died af­ter falling off a chair.

Two post mortems were done on Mor­ris' body—one by the State and the oth­er pri­vate­ly by rel­a­tives­—re­vealed he died from blunt force trau­ma.

Ac­cord­ing to the first au­top­sy done at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre Mor­ris suf­fered brain frac­tures, sev­er­al bro­ken ribs, bleed­ing from in­ter­nal or­gans, burnt marks to the back (al­leged­ly from a taser), con­tu­sion to the right eye, bleed­ing to the brain as well as dam­age to his shoul­ders and legs.

Bal­con, who po­lice la­belled as the mas­ter­mind in the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Bharatt, was known to the po­lice as a sex­u­al, drug, firearms, rob­bery and lar­ce­ny of­fend­er. He was in an un­con­scious state un­til he died on Mon­day, eight days af­ter he was de­tained by po­lice.

Bal­con had been picked up mere hours af­ter Mor­ris and was lat­er hos­pi­talised at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex af­ter suf­fer­ing mas­sive head in­juries. He was al­so paral­ysed.

A post mortem on Bal­con’s body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James by pathol­o­gist Dr East­lyn Mc­Don­ald-Bur­ris re­vealed that Bal­con died due to mul­ti­ple trau­ma to the body.

The in­juries he sus­tained could have been due to a beat­ing he al­leged­ly sus­tained while try­ing to es­cape po­lice cus­tody.

Sev­er­al se­nior po­lice sources con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that Bal­con spent close to 13 hours in the cus­tody of SORT.

Sources said Bal­con was tak­en back and forth from the Cu­mu­to base where SORT is sta­tioned af­ter he led po­lice to sev­er­al lo­ca­tions in east Trinidad as they ques­tioned him about Bharatt's dis­ap­pear­ance. None of the search­es led them to Bharatt.

"At no time did any homi­cide per­son­nel or any­one else see Bal­con. The last thing we heard was that he was tak­en di­rect­ly to the hos­pi­tal," re­vealed a source fa­mil­iar with the case.

Sources said Mor­ris was al­so in the cus­tody of SORT for close to 13 hours where of­fi­cers at­tempt­ed to find out where Bharatt was be­ing kept. Sources said apart from a half-hour stay at the Mal­abar Po­lice Sta­tion, Mor­ris was al­so tak­en to SORT head­quar­ters and then to var­i­ous lo­ca­tions.

Guardian Me­dia was told that sev­er­al en­tries made in the di­ary at SORT head­quar­ters have been seized. The con­tents of those en­tries may now be in the hands of the PCA. "Some of the en­tries in that di­ary are flim­sy, but it does show that the men were brought in there and they had al­leged­ly made cer­tain ut­ter­ances," a se­nior source said.