Dur­ing a mas­sive search ex­er­cise, in­volv­ing 248 per­son­nel from the Po­lice Ser­vice, Fire Ser­vice, De­fence Force and mem­bers of the Hunters As­so­ci­a­tion two sep­a­rate sets of skele­tal re­mains - be­lieved to be hu­man - were found in the thick forest­ed area off the Heights of Aripo

Af­ter the de­com­pos­ing body of An­drea Bharatt was found on Thurs­day and the dis­cov­ery of hu­man and an­i­mal re­mains on Fri­day morn­ing many mem­bers of the pub­lic called on the po­lice to car­ry out more search­es as they fear the Aripo area was noth­ing but a dump­ing ground for crim­i­nals.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, a sin­gle bone was found around 12:55 pm on Sun­day down a precipice off the Aripo Main Road.

Less than an hour lat­er around 1:55 pm, a res­i­dent alert­ed the par­ty of of­fi­cers con­duct­ing what was dubbed op­er­a­tion Aripo Sweep- spear­head­ed by DCP Joanne Archie and Supt Rishi Singh - that he spot­ted a scat­ter­ing of bones at the bot­tom of a steep de­cline off the Main Road. The res­i­dents es­cort­ed of­fi­cers to the scene where the bones were re­cov­ered. Of­fi­cers said the bones bore some re­sem­blance to hu­man bones in vary­ing states of de­com­po­si­tion.

Of­fi­cers said the bones were found about two miles apart from where the first set was seen.

The Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cers or­dered the re­moval of the bones.

The bones were sub­se­quent­ly tak­en to a fu­ner­al home be­fore be­ing trans­port­ed to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre on Mon­day morn­ing where they will be test­ed.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia on-site on Sun­day, a mem­ber of the Hunters As­so­ci­a­tion, said they were all emo­tion­al to re­turn to the area af­ter An­drea’s body was found.

“We are all heart­bro­ken fol­low­ing An­drea’s dis­cov­ery and to re­turn here we are all very emo­tion­al but we are of the be­lief that yes the area has be­come a dump­ing ground for crim­i­nals,” the hunter said.

He said the mas­sive team was able to search about 12 kilo­me­tres of ground and found heaps of skele­tal re­mains not too far off from where Bharatt’s re­mains were found strewn down a precipice.

“We can­not say yet if hu­man or an­i­mal but sev­er­al sam­ples were tak­en to be car­ried to Foren­sic for test­ing. We will have to await the re­sults,” the hunter said.

A res­i­dent in the area, who op­er­ates a small par­lour and who spoke un­der anonymi­ty said since Thurs­day the hilly vil­lage has been tense.

“Peo­ple fre­quent­ed the area to go to the wa­ter­fall close to where An­drea’s body was found but since then no­body go­ing up. Even by me here there’s a riv­er that peo­ple go to and they park their cars by me and I would watch it for them while they go to the riv­er to bathe or lime but no­body has come since.”

The res­i­dent de­scribed the area as “gen­er­al­ly safe” but added that it is scary as there are no street lights.

“Every elec­tion come and go the peo­ple who want our votes com­ing in the dark to talk to us. On­ly promis­es and no street lights up to now. The place does be re­al dark.”

The woman’s hus­band said he strong­ly be­lieves the area is a dump­ing ground.

“Yes be­cause they feel they can dump be­cause it dark and no­body catch­ing up with them so they feel it safe to con­tin­ue to come to dump again so yes the crim­i­nals pass­ing through,” he said.

Mean­while, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to An­drea’s mur­der con­tin­ues and an au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be done to­day to de­ter­mine how she met her death.