Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

The fam­i­ly of An­drea Bharatt was ex­pect­ing an­swers in the death of the 23-year-old Ari­ma Mag­is­trate’s clerk, but an au­top­sy per­formed yes­ter­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre by pathol­o­gist Dr Sonu-Sekhar Gaju­la proved in­con­clu­sive.

It means that at this stage, po­lice can­not charge any­one for mur­der.

The key sus­pect, who was on bail when po­lice held him, de­spite hav­ing over 45 pend­ing cas­es in court, died in hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day.

Bharatt’s trag­ic end trig­gered an out­pour­ing of grief and anger across the na­tion five days af­ter her de­com­posed body was found off a precipice in the Heights of Aripo last Wednes­day af­ter she had been kid­napped by two men in Ari­ma on Jan­u­ary 29.

Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia that due to the ad­vanced de­com­posed state of the body they could not say with any cer­tain­ty how she died.

Sources say that Bharatt’s face was bad­ly de­com­posed and there ap­peared to be sev­er­al an­i­mal bites about her body.

How­ev­er, swabs were tak­en for test­ing to de­ter­mine if the young woman was sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed.

Pri­vate au­top­sy

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Bharatt’s fam­i­ly post­ed on so­cial me­dia late yes­ter­day evening that they have de­cid­ed to do a sec­ond au­top­sy and ac­tivist In­shan Ish­mael lat­er in­di­cat­ed that he and two oth­er peo­ple will fund the au­top­sy to be done to­day.

An­drea’s fa­ther, Ran­dolph Bharatt ar­rived at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James short­ly be­fore 9 am and just af­ter 11.15 am was dri­ven out of the com­pound in an un­marked po­lice ve­hi­cle.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Bharatt af­ter lunch yes­ter­day he said po­lite­ly, “I just want to be left alone right now. I need time for my­self.”

As the in­ves­ti­ga­tion now re­mains at a sen­si­tive stage, Guardian Me­dia asked Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, how the re­sults of this post-mortem may af­fect the in­ves­ti­ga­tion? He re­spond­ed, “pa­tience.”

Se­nior homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia there are two sus­pects that re­main in cus­tody fol­low­ing the death of An­drew Mor­ris last week and most re­cent­ly the main sus­pect 37-year-old Joel Bal­con who died at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex around 2:20 pm yes­ter­day, ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia re­lease.

Main suspect in the kidnapping of Andrea Bharatt, Joel Balcon

The Guardian had ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed sev­er­al days ago that Bal­con, who sus­tained in­juries while in po­lice cus­tody, suf­fered spinal in­juries and was in an un­con­scious state since he had been ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tal.

Bal­con who had a long rap sheet of of­fences in­clud­ing rape, kid­nap­ping, rob­bery, lar­ce­ny, and firearm mat­ters, was the main per­son who mas­ter­mind­ed the kid­nap­ping that lat­er end­ed in the death of Bharatt. Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS me­dia re­lease of the ini­tial 70 charges he had 45 of those were still pend­ing in court.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors in­to An­drea’s death and kid­nap­ping had in­di­cat­ed in an ex­clu­sive Guardian Me­dia sto­ry last Sat­ur­day that they be­lieved Bal­con used the Heights of Aripo as a dump­ing ground af­ter the body of Bharatt was found there.

That find lat­er prompt­ed two search­es on Fri­day and Sun­day where po­lice re­cov­ered three sets of skele­tal re­mains that have since been sent for test­ing.

Bal­con sus­pect­ed in

ex-lover’s mur­der

Bal­con they be­lieve may have al­so been re­spon­si­ble for the dis­ap­pear­ance and mur­der of oth­er women in­clud­ing Teri “Smur­fette” Gomez who went miss­ing in Jan­u­ary 2008.

Bal­con, ac­cord­ing to Gomez’s rel­a­tives, had a child with her and re­peat­ed­ly beat her dur­ing their re­la­tion­ship.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors in­volved in sev­er­al cold cas­es say that they will be turn­ing their at­ten­tion to miss­ing women from East Trinidad who may have been mur­dered and nev­er found.

A se­nior homi­cide source said Bal­con’s post mortem is ex­pect­ed to be per­formed on Thurs­day due to COVID reg­u­la­tions.

While Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors have widened their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Bal­con’s ac­tiv­i­ties, sources in­formed Guardian Me­dia about fresh in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Bharatt’s death in which the two re­main­ing sus­pects - a man and his wife - re­main in po­lice cus­tody.

Sources fa­mil­iar with the case said that con­trary to what had been re­port­ed in an­oth­er news­pa­per, Mor­ris had not with­drawn any cash at the ATM in Trinci­ty.

Se­nior in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­vealed that Bal­con and the oth­er sus­pect had dri­ven to a sa­van­nah in Bon Air Arou­ca, where they met with with the sus­pect’s wife on the night that Bharatt went miss­ing.

Bal­con lat­er gave the cou­ple Bharatt’s bank card and they went to the ATM in Trinci­ty where they with­drew close to $5,000 be­fore re­turn­ing to meet Bal­con in the sa­van­nah.

Andrea Bharatt

With Bharatt still alive in the back seat, it was here the sus­pect and his wife were giv­en Bharatt’s per­son­al pos­ses­sions in­clud­ing jew­ellery.

It was that per­son­al jew­ellery that po­lice lat­er found in the pos­ses­sion of the fe­male sus­pect who has since been ques­tioned ex­ten­sive­ly by in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

Sources say that the cou­ple lat­er drove off in a Ti­i­da mo­tor­car af­ter re­turn­ing the card to Bal­con— who sources say with­drew an ad­di­tion­al $5,000 ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing from Bharatt’s ac­count be­fore re­turn­ing the rental mo­tor­car that had been bor­rowed from Mor­ris.

Mor­ris’ au­top­sy re­sults

Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­tained the au­top­sy re­sults of Mor­ris which in­di­cat­ed that he died from blunt force trau­ma to the head and body.

The de­tailed au­top­sy, ac­cord­ing to sources, al­leged­ly re­vealed that he suf­fered sev­er­al bro­ken ribs, a con­tu­sion to the right eye, dam­age to his legs, brain frac­tures, bleed­ing from in­ter­nal or­gans, and burn marks to the back (pos­si­bly from a taser), shoul­ders bad­ly dam­aged and bleed­ing from in­ter­nal or­gans.

Mor­ris’s fam­i­ly had al­leged that he was beat­en by of­fi­cers at­tached to the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) when they de­tained him two days af­ter Bharatt had been kid­napped.

They al­so al­leged he was beat­en while in cus­tody at the Mal­abar Po­lice Sta­tion.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith had told the me­dia that Mor­ris was sick­ly and had fall­en off a chair and lat­er died.

He said that Mor­ris had act­ed vi­o­lent­ly when po­lice of­fi­cers of SORT had at­tempt­ed to sub­due him at his Tumpuna Road in Ari­ma on Jan­u­ary 31 af­ter came to de­tain him in Bharatt’s kid­nap­ping.

Di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty David West told Guardian Me­dia they are pur­su­ing three sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tions as he in­di­cat­ed the death of Mor­ris will be looked at sep­a­rate­ly, the death of Bal­con will be the ba­sis of a sec­ond in­ves­ti­ga­tion and a third in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be launched as to why po­lice did not sub­mit files or at­tend court in sev­er­al of the mat­ters that Bal­con had, that were lat­er dis­missed by the courts.

Police Commissioner Gary Griffith