No charges yet in Cumuto mass body burial case

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Cu­mu­to res­i­dents are call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties not to “side­line” their probe in­to the dis­cov­ery of bod­ies at the Cu­mu­to Pub­lic Ceme­tery, as they are con­cerned that the mat­ter may not be prop­er­ly re­solved.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, a gar­den­er was test­ing his air ri­fle near the ceme­tery on April 18 when he no­ticed peo­ple dig­ging a grave.

Af­ter speak­ing with the grave dig­gers, he was re­port­ed­ly told that they were dis­pos­ing of chil­dren’s bod­ies as part of a pau­per’s fu­ner­al.

How­ev­er, the gar­den­er took the men to the po­lice sta­tion, where they were tak­en in­to cus­tody.

Po­lice were called to the scene, where they found the re­mains of 50 in­fants, four men (one show­ing signs of a pri­or post-mortem) and two women (one al­so show­ing signs of a pri­or post-mortem).

Sources said con­trary to the­o­ries on so­cial me­dia, it was like­ly that the re­mains were those of “un­claimed” bod­ies that were left at hos­pi­tals.

Ac­cord­ing to the law, un­claimed bod­ies must be iden­ti­fied be­fore they can be dis­posed of.

Ac­cord­ing to the Bur­ial Grounds Act Chap­ter 30:50, any­one who in­ters a corpse at a depth of less than four feet is guilty of an in­fringe­ment of the reg­u­la­tions.

The act al­so stip­u­lates that no more than one body is to be buried per grave, un­less in sit­u­a­tions where the bod­ies are those of rel­a­tives.

Po­lice said the re­mains re­cov­ered re­mained in stor­age at a fu­ner­al home un­til the nec­es­sary analy­ses could be con­duct­ed.

Po­lice sources said that as of last Fri­day, the sus­pects, ages 18 and 25 years old, both from Ari­ma, were not yet charged.

Guardian Me­dia al­so re­turned to the ceme­tery on Fri­day. The grave where the bod­ies were dis­cov­ered was still open, with blue sur­gi­cal gloves still present on the mounds of dirt near­by.

One man, Gi­an­car­lo Chin-Yan, who works at an au­to re­pair shop near the en­trance to the ceme­tery, said he was not con­vinced that the mat­ter would ad­dress is­sues of il­le­git­i­mate buri­als.

He added that he felt res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty and the wider pub­lic had, for the most part, “moved on” with their lives, not­ing that while the dis­cov­ery of the bod­ies was un­usu­al and un­set­tling, the at­ten­tion had large­ly shift­ed on­to re­cent in­ci­dents of vi­o­lent crime across the coun­try.

“It was a sur­prise at first, but no­body’s re­al­ly dig­ging up to get to the bot­tom of it,” Chin Yan said.

“They might ar­rest the two men they found dig­ging the grave, they may fine the com­pa­ny in­volved but I don’t think it will stop any­thing like this from hap­pen­ing again.

“I cer­tain it have more il­le­gal buri­als... I’m sure that’s hap­pen­ing all over the coun­try. It’s just in this in­stance some­body hap­pened to see them and call the po­lice, which led to them be­ing caught.”

Michelle Ram­samooj, who works at a roti shop a few me­tres away from the ceme­tery, said she did not live in the area, but not­ed that even as an em­ploy­ee, she was un­set­tled by the in­ci­dent.

“Know­ing that you right here and just a few me­tres away this dis­cov­ery was made. So it’s not good to know this hap­pen­ing in the same area you’re at.

“I think peo­ple (in the area) aren’t talk­ing about it a lot. If they are they’re keep­ing this a lot.”

Ram­samooj said she hoped that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would re­veal the iden­ti­ties of the bod­ies and that their rel­a­tives would be in­formed.

“If they can iden­ti­fy them and let them (rel­a­tives) know what hap­pened,” she said.

One Cu­mu­to res­i­dent, who asked not to be named, not­ed that while the in­ci­dent was up­set­ting, the gate at the en­trance of the Cu­mu­to Ceme­tery was still un­locked and open up to Fri­day. He claimed the gate was open and un­locked for months and was con­cerned that fail­ure to se­cure the area would lead to un­of­fi­cial buri­als.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment on the is­sue, chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC), Ken­wyn Phillip, said he met with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice last Thurs­day to dis­cuss im­prov­ing se­cu­ri­ty at ceme­ter­ies un­der the cor­po­ra­tion’s re­mit.

Re­fer­ring to an in­ci­dent in Au­gust 2024 at the Tu­rure Ceme­tery. where the body of Kevon “Shrek” Lu­cas was dug from its grave and set on fire, Phillip said there was a need to bet­ter se­cure these ar­eas.

“Some of these con­cerns were raised, we in­struct­ed the de­part­ment to build bar­ri­ers and bar­ri­cades for all en­trances to ceme­ter­ies in the re­gion, not on­ly in Cu­mu­to if you re­call there was a sit­u­a­tion where they dug up a body in the Tu­rure Ceme­tery,” Phillip said.

“We would have had a meet­ing with all ceme­tery keep­ers and we’re in the process of re­view­ing the ceme­tery keep­ers for all ceme­ter­ies in the re­gion, so the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion is work­ing on it.”