Close to 22 of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) have been fin­gered in the deaths of Joel Bal­con and An­drew Mor­ris, the prime sus­pects in the mur­der of An­drea Bharatt, 23, of Ari­ma, ac­cord­ing to a pre­lim­i­nary re­port.

Well-placed sources told Guardian Me­dia that pre­lim­i­nary in­ter­nal rec­om­men­da­tions from the probe be­ing done by the po­lice in­clude ei­ther send­ing the of­fi­cers on sus­pen­sion pend­ing the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion or al­low­ing them to re­main on du­ty while the in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

How­ev­er, sources close to the de­vel­op­ment said these rec­om­men­da­tions are not fi­nal, would be looked in­to fur­ther and care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion made on the de­ci­sions to be tak­en. Sources al­so stat­ed that be­cause the of­fi­cers were masked there isn't "much con­crete ev­i­dence with re­gards to iden­ti­fy­ing the of­fi­cers." A sug­ges­tion from the pre­lim­i­nary re­port al­so in­cludes shut­ting down SORT. How­ev­er, "There's no fi­nal­i­ty on that just yet," added a well-placed source.

Ac­cord­ing to sources, SORT had up un­til Fri­day to sub­mit their re­ports about the in­ci­dent.

Andrea Bharatt

Guardian Me­dia spoke with sev­er­al peo­ple who would have pro­vid­ed the po­lice with in­for­ma­tion about the deaths of Bal­con and Mor­ris over the last few days.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the pre­lim­i­nary find­ings of this par­tic­u­lar re­port, part of the in­ter­nal/di­vi­sion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion that be­gan last Mon­day and which was ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed by the Sun­day Guardian, are ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed over to the DCP for Crime Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob on Mon­day. Two Act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dents of Po­lice were man­dat­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the deaths of both men.

Apart from this in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) and the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) have start­ed sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the deaths. Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors are al­so con­duct­ing a fourth in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Mor­ris, who was known to the po­lice and was al­so a known drug deal­er in Tumpuna, Ari­ma, where he lived, was de­tained by of­fi­cers of SORT on Jan­u­ary 31, and his fam­i­ly al­leged he was beat­en in their pres­ence be­fore be­ing tak­en away. The fol­low­ing day Mor­ris died at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal.

Two post mortems were done on Mor­ris' body—one by the State and the oth­er pri­vate­ly by rel­a­tives—re­vealed he died from blunt force trau­ma.

Ac­cord­ing to the first au­top­sy done at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre Mor­ris suf­fered brain frac­tures, sev­er­al bro­ken ribs, bleed­ing from in­ter­nal or­gans, burnt marks to the back (al­leged­ly from a taser), con­tu­sion to the right eye, bleed­ing to the brain as well as dam­age to his shoul­ders and legs.

Bal­con, who po­lice la­belled as the mas­ter­mind in the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Bharatt, a clerk at the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates' Court, was known to the po­lice as a sex­u­al, drug, firearms, rob­bery and lar­ce­ny of­fend­er. He was in an un­con­scious state un­til he died two Mon­days ago, eight days af­ter he was de­tained by po­lice.

Bal­con had been picked up mere hours af­ter Mor­ris and was lat­er hos­pi­talised at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex af­ter suf­fer­ing mas­sive head in­juries. He was al­so paral­ysed.

A post mortem on Bal­con’s body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James by pathol­o­gist Dr East­lyn Mc­Don­ald-Bur­ris re­vealed he died due to mul­ti­ple trau­ma to the body.

The in­juries he sus­tained could have been due to a beat­ing he al­leged­ly sus­tained while try­ing to es­cape po­lice cus­tody.

A ma­jor con­cern not­ed by sev­er­al wit­ness­es who gave in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice had to do with the stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the cov­er­ing of the of­fi­cers' faces. They rec­om­mend­ed that if of­fi­cers are ex­e­cut­ing war­rants they should not cov­er their faces.

Those in­ter­viewed by the se­nior of­fi­cers al­so rec­om­mend­ed that there should be a manda­to­ry pol­i­cy of wear­ing body cam­eras for po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to tac­ti­cal or op­er­a­tional units.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young had said al­most a week ago that he had been in­formed by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith that SORT, The In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) would be soon equipped with body cam­eras.

Guardian Me­dia al­so un­der­stands that sev­er­al of the peo­ple who spoke to the in­ves­ti­ga­tors were not com­fort­able in re­veal­ing what they knew about this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter and felt that the meth­ods of giv­ing state­ments and ev­i­dence should be re­vised for the safe­ty of cit­i­zens.

Se­nior sources fa­mil­iar with the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions said that sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple were ap­proached to give state­ments but were fear­ful for their lives.

On the PSB side of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, one source point­ed out that they had spo­ken to sev­er­al peo­ple who had ex­pressed fear about giv­ing any state­ments on the al­leged beat­ings.

Mean­while, Di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­pli­ants Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) David West has said that in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the deaths of Mor­ris and Bal­con are con­tin­u­ing.

He could not give a time­line as to when the in­ves­ti­ga­tions will be com­plet­ed.

"I don’t want to give a time­line on the in­ves­ti­ga­tions. I am in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter and we’re look­ing at all as­pects of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions right now,” he said.

In a state­ment to the me­dia last Mon­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said a "full-scale" po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to the mat­ter.

Bharatt went miss­ing on Jan­u­ary 29 and her body found dumped down a precipice in the Heights of Aripo six days lat­er.