Tragic end for Arianna

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The death of an 11-year-old Stan­dard Four stu­dent of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha-run Ca­roni Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School has sparked con­fu­sion, as con­flict­ing ac­counts have emerged about the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to her pass­ing.

Rel­a­tives said Ar­i­an­na Ram­di­al died at hos­pi­tal ear­ly yes­ter­day, af­ter be­ing ad­mit­ted days ear­li­er with com­plaints of ill­ness.

How­ev­er, the in­for­ma­tion from the fam­i­ly and school of­fi­cials about what tran­spired be­fore the child’s death is con­flict­ing.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha sec­re­tary gen­er­al Vi­jay Ma­haraj said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was “deeply hurt and dev­as­tat­ed” by the loss and not­ed that in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er agen­cies were un­der­way.

Ma­haraj al­so stat­ed that ini­tial in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ed the child had bruis­es and that un­con­firmed re­ports of pos­si­ble sex­u­al abuse were cir­cu­lat­ing, stress­ing that on­ly an au­top­sy could de­ter­mine the cause of death.

“Ini­tial in­di­ca­tions sug­gest the body was bruised and bat­tered. A po­lice re­port was made pre­vi­ous­ly of bruis­es and bat­tered marks on this child,” Ma­haraj said.

He ex­plained that the child last at­tend­ed school on March 4, with the school week end­ing short­ly af­ter.

Ma­haraj al­so in­di­cat­ed that an of­fi­cial po­lice re­port was made last year of sex­u­al abuse against the child.

He said the school com­mu­ni­ty has been left shak­en by the de­vel­op­ment.

“Our chil­dren are deeply trau­ma­tised at this point,” he said.

How­ev­er, a close rel­a­tive, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, yes­ter­day strong­ly de­nied the claims made by Ma­haraj, of­fer­ing a coun­ter­claim of the child be­ing a vic­tim of bul­ly­ing at school.

“Every­thing there is false and mis­lead­ing. The hos­pi­tal had no marks of vi­o­lence be­cause they would have called the po­lice a long time ago if it had any marks,” the rel­a­tive said.

The rel­a­tive pro­vid­ed a de­tailed ac­count of the child’s fi­nal days, in­di­cat­ing that she had com­plained of pain in her right shoul­der af­ter re­port­ed­ly be­ing pushed against a con­crete sink at school ear­li­er in the week.

“The right hand on the up­per shoul­der was pain­ing. So, ap­par­ent­ly, the bul­ly that was in school pushed her against the sink, on a con­crete sink. And it looked like her hand bent back when she fell or some­thing like that. So, on Fri­day, they stayed home.”

Ac­cord­ing to the rel­a­tive, the child stayed home from school on Fri­day due to the Hin­du ob­ser­vance of Phag­wa and con­tin­ued to com­plain of arm pain. By Sat­ur­day, she de­vel­oped a fever and headaches, and her con­di­tion wors­ened on Sun­day with vom­it­ing and weak­ness.

She was even­tu­al­ly tak­en to the Mt Hope Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, where she was ad­mit­ted and treat­ed. The rel­a­tive said the child was dis­charged on Mon­day with a di­ag­no­sis of gas­troen­teri­tis and med­ica­tion.

When her con­di­tion de­te­ri­o­rat­ed again, she was tak­en to a health cen­tre and lat­er re­turned to hos­pi­tal, where she com­plained of se­vere ab­dom­i­nal and rib pain.

“Tues­day morn­ing, my sis­ter con­tact­ed me and said Ar­i­an­na is not feel­ing well again. What do I do? She don’t have trans­port. Every­body’s in work. I said you need to take her to the near­est health cen­tre. She went to the St He­le­na Health Cen­tre, where they gave her an­oth­er re­fer­ral on Tues­day dur­ing the day to go to Mount Hope. They went back to Mount Hope on Tues­day, Tues­day night is when she was ward­ed.”

The rel­a­tive said it was on­ly lat­er that the child dis­closed she had been pushed at school.

“All this time Ar­i­an­na wasn’t say­ing any­thing as to what was caus­ing the pain, the vom­it­ing, the fever. It was lat­er her moth­er asked what caused it, and she said a lit­tle girl in the class pushed her against a con­crete sink,” the rel­a­tive stat­ed.

She al­so al­leged that the child had ex­pe­ri­enced bul­ly­ing over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od, in­clud­ing be­ing mocked for a skin con­di­tion.

The rel­a­tive fur­ther claimed that med­ical ex­am­i­na­tions, in­clud­ing X-rays, re­port­ed­ly found no vis­i­ble ex­ter­nal in­juries con­sis­tent with be­ing abused, as was al­leged by Ma­haraj.

“We were not see­ing if she had any marks, the doc­tors didn’t see any marks, no marks of vi­o­lence on her body,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to the fam­i­ly mem­ber, doc­u­men­ta­tion re­lat­ed to the al­leged bul­ly­ing, in­clud­ing let­ters pur­port­ed­ly writ­ten to the child, has since been hand­ed over to the po­lice.

Po­lice au­thor­i­ties have not pub­licly con­firmed any of these claims. Of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day the child’s moth­er was in­ter­viewed as per usu­al pro­to­col and the cause of death will be de­ter­mined fol­low­ing a post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion yes­ter­day con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter has been launched.