Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Homi­cide de­tec­tives are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the death of 63-year-old Ramesh Lal­be­har­ry af­ter an au­top­sy sug­gest­ed he may have been beat­en, de­spite ini­tial re­ports that he fell from a co­conut tree.

Po­lice con­firmed that an au­top­sy con­duct­ed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain list­ed the cause of death as mul­ti­ple blunt force trau­ma.

Ac­cord­ing to an ini­tial po­lice re­port, around 3 pm on De­cem­ber 31, Lal­be­har­ry was at his home along Has­sanali Trace with rel­a­tives, drink­ing al­co­hol, when he re­port­ed­ly had a dis­pute with a 41-year-old fam­i­ly mem­ber.

Lal­be­har­ry lat­er walked to the back of the house and was sub­se­quent­ly found by rel­a­tives ly­ing be­neath a co­conut tree. In an in­ter­view with re­porters, a rel­a­tive said he dis­cov­ered Lal­be­har­ry un­der the tree and helped him back in­to the house.

The rel­a­tive said that when he re­turned the fol­low­ing day, he was told Lal­be­har­ry had been in­tox­i­cat­ed and had struck his head sev­er­al times.

Po­lice were lat­er in­formed that on Jan­u­ary 3, Lal­be­har­ry was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter vom­it­ing and com­plain­ing of pain. He was ad­mit­ted to a ward and died from his in­juries on Jan­u­ary 6 at about 8 am.

A re­port was filed at the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion the fol­low­ing day. Of­fi­cers of Homi­cide Bu­reau Re­gion Three are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.