Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

“No­body knows how we hurt­ing,” cried Wendy Khem­chan, as she begged for the re­sults of the DNA tests so her broth­er, Rishi Khem­chan, could be laid to rest.

For the past six months, the fam­i­ly has been pray­ing and hop­ing to re­ceive the re­sults from the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC) in Port-of-Spain.

Khem­chan, 38, of Ma­yaro, Heer­alal “Li­nus” Cooblal, 54, of Grand La­goon, Ma­yaro, Andy “Tall­man” George, 40, of Va­len­cia and George Joti left Guayagua­yare on Jan­u­ary 31 for a fish­ing trip.

The ves­sel they were in was found on Feb­ru­ary 5, and on Feb­ru­ary 11 Khem­chan’s bad­ly de­com­posed body was dis­cov­ered in a man­grove in Venezuela.

His rel­a­tives iden­ti­fied his body to the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties based on his cloth­ing, den­tures and phys­i­cal fea­tures. An au­top­sy was done and then his body was brought back to Trinidad, with a death cer­tifi­cate and oth­er doc­u­men­ta­tion, on March 10.

DNA sam­ples were tak­en from them on March 25.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at their home over the week­end, Khem­chan’s sis­ter Wendy broke down in tears.

She said her fam­i­ly is hurt­ing and they are con­sid­er­ing protest­ing in front of the FSC.

“Our fam­i­ly will­ing to go down to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre and protest and do what we have to do to get my broth­er’s body be­cause it is re­al­ly un­bear­able right now and hurts so much. It re­al­ly, re­al­ly hurt­ing, no­body don’t know,” she said.

His oth­er sis­ter, Kavi­ta, said they have been knock­ing on doors but have re­ceived no an­swer from the po­lice or FSC when her broth­er’s body would be re­leased to them.

Lament­ing that they had al­ready print­ed jer­seys and ban­ners for his fu­ner­al, she plead­ed with the au­thor­i­ties to in­ter­vene.

Close fam­i­ly friend Gailann Clarke said, “I’m plead­ing, I’m beg­ging to get Rishi Khem­chan’s re­mains. Please, some­one in au­thor­i­ty, help us. Please help us get Rishi Khem­c­hand’s re­mains so we can put him to rest.”

Last week, Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray called on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to take im­me­di­ate, de­ci­sive ac­tion in this mat­ter.

When con­tact­ed, of­fi­cials of the FSC said the re­sults are ex­pect­ed to be processed in a month to six weeks.

Mean­while, there has been no up­date on the three oth­er miss­ing men.