An­na-Lisa Paul

The au­top­sy on nine-month-old Salileen Ram­sa­roop, who died af­ter she was force-fed the dead­ly in­sec­ti­cide Malathion by a close fe­male rel­a­tive on Thurs­day, was not per­formed yes­ter­day.

In­stead, it is ex­pect­ed to be con­duct­ed lat­er in the week as the fam­i­ly moves to re­solve un­ex­pect­ed is­sues re­lat­ing to the reg­is­tra­tion of her birth.

Ram­sa­roop’s body was hand­ed over to of­fi­cials at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James yes­ter­day, where it will re­main un­til the post-mortem is con­duct­ed.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ram­sa­roop’s grand­moth­er Sharmela De­onar­ine con­firmed the rel­a­tive held in con­nec­tion with the child’s death re­mained in po­lice cus­tody.

While no charges were laid up to last night, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials said it is a pos­si­bil­i­ty this could be done over the week­end.

Malathion is a man-made organophos­phate in­sec­ti­cide that is com­mon­ly used to con­trol mos­qui­toes and a va­ri­ety of in­sects that at­tack fruits, veg­eta­bles, land­scap­ing plants and shrubs.

De­onar­ine, who ad­mit­ted to an over­whelm­ing love for the child, de­scribed her as a, “jol­ly ba­by who loved love-ups, es­pe­cial­ly when you played with her chin and hands.”

Mourn­ing the loss as she kept com­pa­ny with oth­er rel­a­tives, she too ques­tioned what had prompt­ed the sus­pect to poi­son the ba­by.

About the sus­pect, Ram­sa­roop added, “She re­al­ly loved that ba­by. She told me she would have done any­thing for the ba­by, so I don’t know what came over her.”

Al­though the sus­pect was in cus­tody, Ram­sa­roop ap­pealed to the au­thor­i­ties to pro­vide coun­selling, as she added, “I re­al­ly want to get some type of help for her.”

Asked if the woman had been suf­fer­ing with men­tal health is­sues, Ram­sa­roop said if this was the case she was not aware.

Ac­cept­ing that post­par­tum de­pres­sion was very re­al and that many per­sons were not even aware of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing it, Ram­sa­roop said the en­tire sit­u­a­tion was very try­ing for her.

Re­call­ing Salileen’s per­son­al­i­ty at just nine months, she said, “That ba­by was re­al, re­al nice.”