Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Han­nah Mathu­ra lived a life very dif­fer­ent from oth­er young peo­ple her age. Liv­ing with an un­spec­i­fied ill­ness and un­der bizarre liv­ing con­di­tions meant that she was not ex­posed to many ac­tiv­i­ties her peers would have oth­er­wise en­joyed. Her name has piqued the na­tion’s at­ten­tion since her skele­tal re­mains were dis­cov­ered in a shal­low grave in the back­yard of her fam­i­ly’s Bu­tu Trace, Val­sayn home, in March.

The dis­cov­ery prompt­ed a na­tion­al out­cry over the strange na­ture of her death. There have been no pho­tographs of Han­nah in the pub­lic do­main, and there has been pub­lic spec­u­la­tion over what she looked like and what her life would have been like.

It re­mains un­clear whether Mathu­ra was en­rolled in any schools, as most ac­counts from in­ves­ti­ga­tors, neigh­bours, and at least one of her sib­lings de­scribed her as spend­ing most of her life con­fined to the fam­i­ly’s home. Mathu­ra, who was last seen alive in Ju­ly 2017, was 18 at the time of her death.

On Tues­day, of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion II re­ceived in­struc­tions from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to charge Mathu­ra’s par­ents, An­drew Mathu­ra, 65, and Alana Mathu­ra, 63, with her mur­der.

The charges against Mathu­ra’s par­ents is the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which was ini­ti­at­ed when one of her sib­lings re­port­ed her death to the po­lice ear­li­er this year.

Both par­ents were orig­i­nal­ly de­tained for ques­tion­ing in March, fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of her re­mains at the home, but even­tu­al­ly re­leased, pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

In the on­ly known pub­lic in­ter­view with Crime Watch host Ian Al­leyne in May, one of Mathu­ra’s sib­lings, Je­re­mi­ah Mathu­ra, dis­missed claims that she was dif­fer­ent­ly abled as she could walk and talk and had ba­sic cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties.

To date, most de­scrip­tions of Mathu­ra from fam­i­ly and neigh­bours are from mem­o­ry.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in March, Mathu­ra’s neigh­bours de­scribed her as a pale, pe­tite girl with long black hair and some Asian fea­tures. But while they were ac­cus­tomed to see­ing Mathu­ra al­most dai­ly, these neigh­bours ad­mit­ted that she sim­ply dis­ap­peared from their view one day, nev­er to re­turn and with­out their sus­pi­cions be­ing aroused.

Je­re­mi­ah told Crime Watch that in the years lead­ing up to her death, his sis­ter even­tu­al­ly de­vel­oped oede­ma, a con­di­tion where parts of the body would be­gin to swell as her health con­tin­ued to de­cline.

Je­re­mi­ah said he at­tempt­ed to re­port the in­ci­dent to the au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, be­tween 2013 and 2014, with lit­tle suc­cess. He feels that the mat­ter was not tak­en as se­ri­ous­ly as it should have, as he con­tact­ed the agen­cies while he him­self was still a child.

And while there were some vis­its to the home by of­fi­cials, they were turned away by a close male rel­a­tive, he claimed.

“I told the po­lice we were try­ing to get this sit­u­a­tion rec­ti­fied. I open­ly spoke about my is­sues with the man, and it was al­ways a sit­u­a­tion where he was vex and there’s a war with him and I, but oth­er peo­ple were be­ing af­fect­ed.

“There were times they came and he said things like you do not have a war­rant; there’s noth­ing go­ing on here.”

In the hours lead­ing up to Mathu­ra’s death, Je­re­mi­ah said, her health took a sharp de­cline, and claimed re­peat­ed ef­forts to get med­ical at­ten­tion for her were fu­tile.

“Every­body made an ap­peal to call a doc­tor, and it wasn’t the first time we re­alised some­thing was of grave con­cern.

“She was so frail, de­hy­drat­ed be­cause of her ail­ment and just skin and bones. My first in­stinct was to in­form our par­ents ... they were talk­ing about get­ting to the DMO, I heard of that.”

Je­re­mi­ah said his sis­ter’s body re­mained cov­ered with a white sheet at the house be­tween six and eight hours as oth­er sib­lings mourned her death. At the time, Je­re­mi­ah said he did not know what the next step would be.

He and oth­er sib­lings as­sumed that their sis­ter’s body was tak­en to a fu­ner­al home for a pri­vate in­ter­ment, as he on­ly learnt the sor­did truth that she was buried on the same com­pound this year.

Je­re­mi­ah left the fam­i­ly’s home in 2020 ow­ing to mul­ti­ple dis­agree­ments with a rel­a­tive.

Mathu­ra’s skele­tal re­mains were tak­en from the Ide­al Fu­ner­al Home in Pe­tit Bourg to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, where it re­mained for months, pend­ing the out­come of a DNA test.

Af­ter the tests re­vealed that the re­mains were in fact those of Mathu­ra in April, sources dis­closed her re­mains were hand­ed over to her sib­lings.

Guardian Me­dia sought to ver­i­fy this with the Mathu­ra sib­lings through their at­tor­ney, San­jiv Bood­hu, who said he was “un­able to get any in­struc­tions.”

In the age of CCTV cam­eras and so­cial me­dia, it is hard to be­lieve that some­one can sim­ply van­ish with­out a trace and with­out arous­ing even the slight­est sus­pi­cion from neigh­bours. But for sev­en years, the ghast­ly fam­i­ly se­cret re­mained buried at their home.

There are many as­pects of her life that may nev­er be known, but her neigh­bours and the pub­lic are hop­ing that the tri­al of her par­ents will shed light on what hap­pened on that night in Ju­ly 2017. It is not sim­ply learn­ing more about Mathu­ra’s life, but they are hope­ful that even in her pass­ing she can re­ceive jus­tice.