Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The au­top­sy of 74-year-old Doo­d­hani Vish­van­ti Sook­nanan has been post­poned to to­day, as in­ves­ti­ga­tors await the re­sults of the post-mortem to de­cide how to ap­proach the mat­ter.

Sook­nanan’s de­com­pos­ing body was found un­der a bed at her fam­i­ly’s Tore­nia Dri­ve, Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas, home on Jan­u­ary 8.

Two of Sook­nanan’s rel­a­tives—her daugh­ter and grand­daugh­ter—were in the house when her body was found; how­ev­er, her daugh­ter claimed that she did not see her moth­er’s body.

Sook­nanan’s body was ex­pect­ed to be tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day for a post-mortem to be con­duct­ed; how­ev­er, sources con­firmed that it re­mained in stor­age at a fu­ner­al home in Cen­tral Trinidad.

Of­fi­cers of the Re­gion III Homi­cide Bu­reau are as­sist­ing with en­quiries in­to Sook­nanan’s death, and the Ch­agua­nas po­lice will su­per­vise the au­top­sy.

These of­fi­cers will al­so be re­spon­si­ble for es­cort­ing the body to and from the fu­ner­al home, which will pre­pare the body and over­see the last rites.

Of­fi­cers of the Cy­ber Crime and So­cial Me­dia Unit are as­sist­ing with the en­quiry as they are re­view­ing so­cial me­dia posts by Sook­nanan’s daugh­ter as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Un­der Sec­tion 4(4) of the Coro­ner’s Act, any per­son who is aware of an un­nat­ur­al death and ne­glects to no­ti­fy a dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $400.

In Sec­tion 2 of the Bur­ial Grounds Act, it states that it is un­law­ful to bury a body in any place that is not a li­censed bur­ial ground, and any­one who buries any body or in any way acts or as­sists in the bur­ial of any body is li­able to a fine of $1,000.