Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Are the skele­tal re­mains found in a shal­low grave at a fam­i­ly com­pound at Bu­tu Road in Val­sayn South eight days ago those of Han­nah Mathu­ra?

The an­swer to the ques­tion seemed un­clear up to yes­ter­day evening, af­ter po­lice made an­oth­er trip to search for skele­tal re­mains at the prop­er­ty ear­li­er in the day and came up emp­ty-hand­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice and foren­sic sources, there are now se­ri­ous un­cer­tain­ties that the skele­tal re­mains they found dur­ing their first search of the com­pound are of a fe­male, mean­ing Han­nah may still be miss­ing.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that foren­sic pro­fes­sion­als are now lean­ing to­wards the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the re­mains are those of a man, throw­ing the case in a di­rec­tion few saw com­ing.

How­ev­er, the re­sults of fur­ther tests, in­clud­ing DNA tests, will now have to be used to con­firm the sex and iden­ti­ty of the body.

At 8.45 yes­ter­day morn­ing, less than a day af­ter two heads of the Mathu­ra fam­i­ly were re­leased from po­lice cus­tody, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice of­fi­cers re­turned to the fam­i­ly com­pound.

Of­fi­cers be­gan by ques­tion­ing rel­a­tives on the com­pound, but there was no sign of the moth­er and fa­ther re­leased by po­lice on Tues­day. There was al­so no sign of the Mathu­ra chil­dren.

Ini­tial­ly, Guardian Me­dia was al­lowed to stay fair­ly close to the com­pound—on the op­po­site side of the street.

Around 15 min­utes af­ter the first of­fi­cers ar­rived at the scene, the Ca­nine Unit ar­rived with a ca­dav­er dog.

The dog sniffed the full area of the com­pound and seemed to pick up some­thing to­wards the back­yard. Not long af­ter, a Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion heavy ve­hi­cle brought an ex­ca­va­tor to the site.

The ex­ca­va­tor op­er­a­tor soon be­gan dig­ging up a vast ex­panse of the big yard.

Po­lice then moved Guardian Me­dia out of the area, cor­don­ing off the end of Bu­tu Road as an ac­tive crime scene. Po­lice guard­ed the top of the road. The dig­ging con­tin­ued for four hours.

Ac­cord­ing to se­nior po­lice sources, how­ev­er, no bod­ies or ev­i­dence was re­cov­ered from the scene.

Of­fi­cers re­mained tight-lipped about yes­ter­day’s op­er­a­tions on the prop­er­ty.

How­ev­er, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is ex­pect­ed to field ques­tions from the me­dia about the case dur­ing its week­ly press brief­ing to­day.

While po­lice cor­doned off the street and the faint sound of the ex­ca­va­tor’s buck­et could be heard dur­ing the ex­ca­va­tion process, res­i­dents of the Val­sayn com­mu­ni­ty—full of lav­ish hous­es, with tow­er­ing walls and well-main­tained prop­er­ties—slowed down in their ve­hi­cles to peep down the street to­wards the home.

There was an eerie, haunt­ing feel­ing to it all. The thought of an­oth­er body be­ing dis­cov­ered at the prop­er­ty un­nerved res­i­dents.

De­spite the suf­fo­cat­ing mid­day heat, a res­i­dent stopped his ve­hi­cle with his ba­by daugh­ter in the back­seat and rolled down his win­dows to ask ques­tions. When he heard the lat­est de­vel­op­ments, he shook his head in dis­gust. He re­called that a few weeks ago, he was walk­ing near the house in ques­tion and he heard two peo­ple fight­ing bit­ter­ly. He said he heard screams and what sound­ed like a phys­i­cal al­ter­ca­tion. He said he ran off in fear. He said when he read in the news that a body was found at the prop­er­ty last week, he as­sumed it may have been linked to that al­ter­ca­tion.

A KFC de­liv­ery dri­ver al­so dropped by to ask ques­tions. He, too, shared a sto­ry. He said two weeks ago he made a de­liv­ery to some­one on the fam­i­ly com­pound where the body was found. Find­ing the vibe of the place to be strange and some­what bizarre, he said he asked about the Math­uras be­cause he no­ticed what seemed like a child look­ing out of win­dows. He said he was told by the per­son who or­dered the food that they had noth­ing to do with the fam­i­ly and were not on good terms.

Last Tues­day, skele­tal re­mains were found in a one-foot deep grave at the Bu­tu Road home. Po­lice were re­port­ed­ly told of the body by some­one liv­ing on the fam­i­ly com­pound. Ini­tial­ly, po­lice and foren­sic pro­fes­sion­als be­lieved it was a fe­male body—18-year-old Han­nah Mathu­ra. It was claimed by po­lice sources that the body had been buried for around sev­en years and that an au­top­sy re­vealed the per­son died from a gun­shot wound to the head.

Last Fri­day, the two fam­i­ly mem­bers were ar­rest­ed. They were re­leased on Tues­day af­ter Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard said more ev­i­dence was need­ed to lay charges against the 66-year-old man and 62-year-old woman. Be­cause of the reclu­sive lifestyle of the Mathu­ra fam­i­ly, ac­cord­ing to rel­a­tives and South Val­sayn res­i­dents, very lit­tle is known about the Mathu­ra house­hold. Some res­i­dents claimed they made calls over the years to re­port con­cerns about the house­hold, but the TTPS said it re­ceived no of­fi­cial re­ports.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors vow to strength­en case

Of­fi­cers prob­ing the death of Han­nah Mathu­ra say the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is far from over.

The promise came af­ter Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard or­dered the of­fi­cers to re­lease Mathu­ra’s par­ents from cus­tody on Tues­day evening and con­tin­ue work­ing on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion sur­round­ing her death.

Mathu­ra’s par­ents were the main sus­pects in her death and had been in cus­tody since last week.

A po­lice source said the chal­lenge with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion may have been the time con­straints to gath­er suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence in the mat­ter to jus­ti­fy the lay­ing of charges.

“It's not an easy sit­u­a­tion and the fact that no one ever re­port­ed her (Han­nah) miss­ing, means that they have had to start the in­ves­ti­ga­tion from scratch, which means we had a rel­a­tive­ly short time to get the ev­i­dence to­geth­er,” the po­lice source said.

De­spite this, the source promised that de­tec­tives will con­tin­ue to re­vis­it dif­fer­ent as­pects of the case, “strength­en” their ev­i­dence, not­ing there were al­so sci­en­tif­ic as­pects of the mat­ter that need­ed to be clar­i­fied be­fore re­turn­ing to the DPP again.

How­ev­er, one of­fi­cer al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the fact that the sus­pects were re­leased with­out charges be­ing laid, not­ing there are no mech­a­nisms that would com­pel the main sus­pect to re­main in one place if the po­lice were seek­ing to re-ar­rest him.

“It's not like bail con­di­tions where some­one who has al­ready been charged would be man­dat­ed to re­port to a po­lice sta­tion and check in or sign a reg­is­ter,” the of­fi­cer said.

“In a sit­u­a­tion like this, the per­son has free reign to go wher­ev­er they like, for all we know he may even leave the ter­ri­to­ry and this is what we would have to deal with.” —With re­port­ing by Jensen La Vende & Shane Su­perville