Sascha Wil­son

The search for miss­ing school­girl Ma­li­ni Per­sad yes­ter­day led to the dis­cov­ery of skele­tal re­mains in a forest­ed area in Bar­rack­pore.

Hunters Search and Res­cue team leader Val­lence Ramb­harat said it is pos­si­ble that the re­mains were Per­sad’s but po­lice told rel­a­tives DNA tests would like­ly be done to con­firm the iden­ti­ty.

A 52-year-old man from Mus­sarap Trace, Barack­pore, is as­sist­ing po­lice with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Per­sad, a Form Two stu­dent of AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege (Bar­rack­pore), was last seen by her rel­a­tives at their Rochard Dou­glas, Bar­rack­pore, home on April 13. Her par­ents said they left her home with rel­a­tives that morn­ing. How­ev­er, Per­sad left home lat­er that morn­ing un­know­ing to her rel­a­tives.

Speak­ing with re­porters at the scene yes­ter­day, Ramb­harat said the fam­i­ly re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that she was seen with a man near Mus­sarap Trace. He said on Tues­day and Wednes­day, his team and the po­lice searched the area with drones. Ramb­harat and his team re­turned to area around 9 am yes­ter­day to search on foot through the forest­ed area. He said around 12.28 pm, they got a foul stench about 300 feet off KPA Road and saw vul­tures on the trees. Un­der a man­go tree, they found skele­tal re­mains. He said blue slip­pers which she was wear­ing and cloth­ing were found on the spot.

Speak­ing with re­porters at the scene, Per­sad’s fa­ther, An­drew, de­scribed his daugh­ter as qui­et. He said she was autis­tic and suf­fered from “drop at­tack syn­drome.”

He re­called that he had rushed home on Sun­day af­ter his broth­er in­formed him she was miss­ing and did his own search­es but could not find her. He even­tu­al­ly went to the po­lice sta­tion to re­port her miss­ing. The heart­bro­ken fa­ther said his fam­i­ly is trau­ma­tised and he is con­cerned for his old­er daugh­ter, who is writ­ing CSEC. He could not think of any rea­son why Per­sad would have left home.

Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion III are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.