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Monday, March 3, 2025

DPP orders release of Hannah Mathura’s parents

Homicide cops told to gather more info

by

Bavita Gopaulchan
348 days ago
20240320
DPP Roger Gaspard

DPP Roger Gaspard

NICOLE DRAYTON

Ex­act­ly one week af­ter the re­mains of Han­nah Mathu­ra were found in the back­yard of her fam­i­ly's Val­sayn South home, Homi­cide de­tec­tives have been told by Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard to con­tin­ue work­ing on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion sur­round­ing her death.

Sources say this has led to po­lice be­ing in­struct­ed to re­lease Mathu­ra's par­ents, who are the two main sus­pects in her death, from cus­tody.

The de­ci­sion to re­lease Mathu­ra's par­ents comes af­ter days of lengthy con­sul­ta­tions be­tween DPP Gas­pard and in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers on whether or not any charges could be laid against the 66-year-old man and 62-year-old woman.

The most re­cent meet­ing with the DPP on the mat­ter was on Mon­day, a po­lice source said.

The 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 main­tained that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was not over and promised that de­tec­tives will con­tin­ue to re­vis­it dif­fer­ent as­pects of Mathu­ra's death and "strength­en" their case, as there were al­so sci­en­tif­ic as­pects of the mat­ter that need­ed to be clar­i­fied be­fore re­turn­ing to the DPP again.

The DPP last night con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers need­ed to gath­er more ev­i­dence be­fore the in­ves­ti­ga­tion could move for­ward.

DPP Gas­pard did not con­firm how long his of­fice would take to de­lib­er­ate on the po­lice’s file on the mat­ter.

Po­lice are look­ing at two charges in the case - mur­der and the im­prop­er dis­pos­al of a body.

Mathu­ra's fa­ther fled from the home be­fore po­lice ar­rived at the scene last week to search for Han­nah's re­mains. He was cap­tured at a rel­a­tive's El Do­ra­do, Tu­na­puna apart­ment last Wednes­day night.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the lat­est de­vel­op­ment last night, one of­fi­cer they were con­cerned, as there were no mech­a­nisms that would com­pel the main sus­pect to re­main in one place if he 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 Bavi­ta Gopaulchan


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