Violence, murder, mystery and the vanishing truth

Jul 23, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

If social commentators, editors in the private media and opposition parties had inquired as to a Roger Khan connection in the death of Sash Sawh and his siblings, anger, rage and cussing down would have emerged from New Garden Street and Robb Street.
The charge from the ruling cabal was that mischief was afoot. But it was Sash Sawh’s own brother-in-law that told the media he wants to speak to Roger Khan about the murders. It was Sash Sawh’s own brother-in-law who has created doubts in people’s mind about what really took place and who were the murderers.
If that is mystery number one, there are many more to come in a land where scandals combine the falls of both Niagara in Canada and Kaieteur in Guyana. Try counting these scandals and see what number you come up with.
But let us stick with violence and murder. Often you hear PPP supporters say that their party will win the next election because Indian people are targets of criminals. It should be the other way around. Indians should vote out the PPP because criminals do not get caught because our forensic capabilities are pathetic.
Hundreds of Indian victims have their cases unsolved because we are a backward country when it comes to scientific investigation of the crime scene. Indian people cannot tell this nation that they are satisfied with police work that goes beyond the questioning of suspects. And who provides the budget for the police – the very leaders they vote for. Our fingerprinting methods are outdated. In today’s world, once you touch an object, the police can pull a print.
I came face to face with this horrible backwardness that characterizes this sad country. In April 2004 I was attacked by two gunmen as the sun began to rise.
The men drove away with my car and neatly parked it outside Kaieteur News. Their fingerprints were all over the doors, the steering wheel etc. The police said the men’s hands were wet so prints were impossible to secure. I ran that with friends abroad and they told me that police response was unadulterated nonsense. It wasn’t. It was true what the police told me.
The answer was that the police had to cope with ancient chemicals. In today’s world, forensic technicians are called to a crime scene quicker than the expert detectives. This brings us to the shooting incident involving two policemen with rumours flying around.
In criminal investigation, involving the use of guns, the hands are always tested for gunpowder. Make a guess if that procedure is followed in this country.
This double death is taking on the aura of a mystery. First, there is a disharmony between the pathologist’s report and the police findings. Then there are some experts who say that one of the gunmen could not have fired two shots on himself because the first bullet would have killed him instantly. Now we are told by a police forensic technician that traces of gunpowder were absent on the hand of the same shooter that is reported to have shot his colleague and turned his gun on himself. Not to mention that there are disputes about linking the bullets to the type of gun used. Do we have a mystery on our hand? Is there a scandal in the making?
It is possible that the two men were murdered by a third person who wanted them out of the way?
Doesn’t this remind you of the Lindo Creek massacre two years ago? So we have three so far—the murder of Sawh and his two siblings, the Lindo Creek killings, and the two policemen in Berbice.
Do we really know the reasons for the Lusignan mayhem? Are there other angles? Of course there are dozens more situations of violent deaths where the truth has vanished into thin air.
There are small nations which do not pretend to being rich like the European and North American countries, but they have top class forensic labs. In any country with our murder rate, forensic methods become a definite requirement. Yet there are barefaced people who tell you that the PPP can win the next elections because Indians are being robbed and murdered with impunity.
So don’t the relatives of the victims who have been killed want to see a state-of-the-art forensic lab? Don’t they want more police competence? Despite these obscene failures on the part of their party that has been in power for 18 years, they are still going to vote for the PPP next year.

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