Joshua Seemu­n­gal

It’s now been two months since the dis­cov­ery of An­drea Bharatt’s body in the heights of Aripo brought the coun­try to its knees.

In the days and weeks since, hun­dreds of peo­ple across T&T have gath­ered for can­dle­light vig­ils, de­mand­ing change. Some­where in those crowds, their faces hid­den be­hind masks were rel­a­tives of miss­ing and mur­dered women who un­der­stood more than most the pain An­drea’s fa­ther felt. The Em­manuel fam­i­ly was among them.

As I en­tered the liv­ing room of their Mamoral home to do an in­ter­view, an im­age of their on­ly daugh­ter Shar­day Em­manuel on a plac­ard stared back at me. Every­thing else in the room fad­ed in­to the back­ground.

Her smile ra­di­at­ed warmth, but the text be­low her pic­ture had a grim mes­sage: Fe­male, African de­scent, five-feet tall, slim built, brown com­plex­ion, brown eyes, short black hair, miss­ing since 27th June 2018.

“Shar­day…Shar­day was queen­ly. She was like a princess, she was an ex­treme­ly fem­i­nine per­son,” said her fa­ther, Ju­nior Em­manuel.

In her bed­room, an an­tique wood­en clos­et is still full of her skirts and dress­es, and her shoe rack full of sneak­ers and dress shoes, just the way she liked it. A 2018 cal­en­dar is al­so in that room where time has stood still since her dis­ap­pear­ance.

Whether di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, every­thing about the fam­i­ly’s life re­volves around that year.

“That day. It was a Wednes­day. She had two days off. She was sup­posed to go with her broth­er and a male friend to the air­port be­cause her broth­er was re­turn­ing to Cana­da. At the last minute, she changed her mind and stayed home,” Em­manuel re­called.

De­ter­mined not to waste her days off, Shar­day went to Ch­agua­nas to shop. Ac­cord­ing to her par­ents, a male friend was sup­posed to pick her up when she was fin­ished.

“There is footage of her go­ing in­to the Cen­tre City Mall in Ch­agua­nas. There’s footage of her get­ting out of the mall and go­ing in­to a taxi. The taxi was traced to drop her off at Long­denville. Dur­ing that time, we tried call­ing her. He (her friend) al­so said he was try­ing to call her be­cause he was try­ing to pick her up,” Em­manuel said.

Shar­day al­ways kept her par­ents in­formed about her where­abouts, so Em­manuel as­sumed some­thing was wrong with her phone. But, as more calls went unan­swered, he be­gan to wor­ry.

It was get­ting late.

“It was prob­a­bly about 8 o’clock. Her mom and I were sit­ting down on the porch, wait­ing to see her come home be­cause we were still call­ing but get­ting no an­swer. Then, we saw a male friend of hers dri­ving up the road quick­ly. He came up the stairs and asked if we had seen Shar­day,” Em­manuel, a dri­ver for Donut Boys, re­called.

An hour lat­er, there was still no sign of Shar­day, so they called the po­lice. On the ad­vice of an of­fi­cer, they filed a miss­ing per­son re­port at the Bras­so Po­lice Sta­tion.

“We told them some­thing is wrong. Our daugh­ter is miss­ing… They called the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit and told them about our sit­u­a­tion,” Shar­day’s fa­ther said.

Two days lat­er, of­fi­cers from the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly home and took state­ments from Shar­day’s par­ents and a male friend. In­ves­ti­ga­tors searched the premis­es, col­lect­ing items like her tooth­brush and hair­brush to ob­tain DNA sam­ples.

Their calls to Shar­day’s phone al­so went unan­swered.

“The day af­ter she went miss­ing, I went to work. I told peo­ple that if I had stayed home here, and know­ing Shar­day was not around, they would think I was go­ing mad,” Em­manuel said, his eyes red and glassy.

“The next day, I put up all the win­dows in my van and I be­gan call­ing out her name. Shar­day, where are you? Shar­day, Shar­day,” he said.

Em­manuel went to work for an­oth­er two weeks be­fore re­al­is­ing he need­ed time off. Days turned in­to weeks, and weeks turned in­to months. Shar­day nev­er came home.

Over­whelmed and drown­ing in de­pres­sion, Em­manuel found com­fort in prayer. He’s con­vinced it al­so brought an­swers.

“We didn’t ask any­body any­thing. Peo­ple would call us and give us in­for­ma­tion. Shar­day was go­ing through this. Shar­day wasn’t hap­py,” Em­manuel said.

Ac­cord­ing to Shar­day’s close friends, the then-21-year-old told them in se­cret that she was be­ing abused by a male friend. On the day she went miss­ing, they claimed, she was go­ing to end the friend­ship.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained What­sapp voice notes sent by Shar­day to her friends days be­fore she went miss­ing.

In one of the voice notes she said: “Last year, I de­cid­ed to come out and let him know that this ain’t work­ing out. When I came out and let him know, that’s when he start­ed. He didn’t want me to leave, so every time I men­tioned it to him, you know, that I fed up and want­ed to go, he con­tin­ued beat­ing me for me to stay.”

In an­oth­er she said: “I just fed up be­cause I tell my­self if I con­tin­ue stay­ing there and just giv­ing in, soon­er or lat­er, it have plen­ty woman I know was in an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship and the on­ly way they come out was through death.”

She nev­er told her par­ents about the abuse.

Long wait for DNA re­sults

A year af­ter Shar­day went miss­ing, a woman’s body was found in the San­ta Flo­ra area. Af­ter learn­ing about it in a news re­port, Em­manuel asked in­ves­ti­ga­tors to view the body. It was wrapped in car­pet and burnt be­yond recog­ni­tion, so of­fi­cers showed him pic­tures in­stead.

As he in­stinc­tive­ly knew he would, he recog­nised some­thing in the pic­tures—a piece of cloth­ing. He was cer­tain that the tie-dye skirt be­longed to his daugh­ter.

“They said, al­right, we have to do some test­ing on that. It’s al­most three years now that my daugh­ter is miss­ing, and we are still wait­ing on that DNA test . . . My daugh­ter’s body could prob­a­bly be in foren­sics in Port-of-Spain in a freez­er,” Em­manuel lament­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to sources, the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre’s DNA lab has been down for two years be­cause of in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues. DNA test­ing re­cent­ly re­sumed at a pri­vate lab in Port-of-Spain. Be­fore that, sam­ples were sent abroad for test­ing, cost­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars and tak­ing months for re­sults to be re­turned. This, in turn, cre­at­ed a back­log that sources said will take years to clear.

“The au­thor­i­ties know what hap­pened to her but be­cause we haven’t got­ten the DNA re­sults. Her case can­not move from a miss­ing per­son case to a homi­cide un­less we get the DNA re­sult,” Shar­day’s fa­ther said.

While he longs for clo­sure, he ad­mit­ted know­ing it would like­ly re­sult in a men­tal break­down. But for Ju­nior Em­manuel jus­tice for Shar­day means far more to him than his san­i­ty.

“Ashan­ti Ri­ley went miss­ing, her body was found. Some­body was held for that. An­drea Bharatt went miss­ing for days, her body was found. Peo­ple were held for that. My daugh­ter is still a miss­ing per­son and the per­son re­spon­si­ble is still out there. What are the au­thor­i­ties wait­ing on? For some­body else to go miss­ing?” he asked an­gri­ly.

Asked what he would say to his daugh­ter if she could hear him, he had this to say: “Shar­day, mom­my and dad­dy are al­ways here for you. You could have come and talked with us be­fore and let us know ex­act­ly what you were go­ing through, in­stead of friends… Dad­dy and mom­my were al­ways there for you no mat­ter what.”

Em­manuel plead­ed with women in abu­sive re­la­tion­ships to speak up and tell some­one.

A male friend was ques­tioned by in­ves­ti­ga­tors short­ly af­ter Shar­day went miss­ing but was re­leased be­cause of a lack of ev­i­dence.

No one has been held in con­nec­tion since.

Ju­ly 30 would have been Shar­day’s 24th birth­day.