The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has ordered the exhumation of the body of a man who died at the New Amsterdam (NA) hospital six hours after he was allegedly beaten.
Stabroek News understands that Ganesh Ramcharran, 44 called “Majjie” was allegedly beaten on December 23 and thrown into a ‘shallow trench’ not far from his home after a resident accused him of stealing a bicycle. Relatives said the man went home around 9.30 am limping and vomiting blood. When Ramcharran was questioned about his injuries, he reportedly named two persons he regarded as friends as his attackers. Relatives said shortly after he lost consciousness and they took him to hospital as blood continued to ooze from his mouth. He died around 3.30 pm the same day without regaining consciousness.
A Berbice-based pathologist performed a post mortem (PM) examination on Ramcharran on December 27 but relatives say they were not allowed to witness the procedure. This newspaper understands that the PM report stated that the victim died by drowning. Reports are that the DPP recently sent a pathologist from Georgetown to exhume the body and police in Berbice are awaiting the report. Relatives told this newspaper that the doctor could not do much since the body had already started to decompose and that the body parts had been removed.
The dead man’s brother, Neville Ramcharran, said after the PM was conducted he suspected something was amiss. “The doctor called me aside and asked me if my brother was married and I told him no. He then said that when he was studying in England he learnt that marks of violence can only be distinguished2 on a White man,” Neville said. He said the doctor went on to tell him that “on coloured people the marks are hard to detect because when they go in the freezer black and blue marks appear on their bodies.” Neville said he found this statement strange and was surprised that the PM did not say whether his brother had suffered internal injuries. The man said he found it even more surprising that the pathologist listed the cause of death as drowning.
In recalling the incident the victim’s sister said she was standing on the bridge around 9 am with a few other relatives when a man from the area approached her and asked, “Majjie is who to you?” She said she told the man that Majjie was her brother and the man complained that he sent him with his to bicycle to buy $100 worth of eggs the day before and he had not returned the bike. The woman said Ganesh who had been out, returned at the same time and the man “started to curse him and chucked him up until he fell.” The woman said her brother explained to the man that the police had picked him up along with a few other “limers” and allegedly took them to clean the station. She told this newspaper that her brother said he had left the bicycle with a friend but he did not see the friend that morning and promised to get the bicycle the next day.
The man said the man demanded his bicycle back immediately and her brother got up and said he would go and look for the friend again. The man continued to “chuck” Ganesh through Cow Dam, Angoy’s Avenue to search for the friend she said. The woman said, “I left for work but I was not afraid that the man would do my brother anything because they were supposed to be friends. But around 9:30 to 10 o’clock I got a call from my sister that my brother was beaten up bad and was thrown in a shallow trench.” She said she learnt that her brother walked home, about three quarters of a mile, covered in mud and was limping and clutching his stomach. The woman said her sister and Neville confronted the man and another person who reportedly helped to beat her brother but they both denied the allegations. Neville said he also “complained to the man’s father and I told him if my brother dies his son is responsible.”
The man’s sister said that during the PM a mortician requested two bottles and when she enquired what they were for he told her that “he needed the bottles to put my brother’s body parts to send them for testing. I left and purchased two big, wide-mouth bottles but the body parts could not fit in it and he said he would cut them to let them fit,” she said. The woman said “At the time I did not realize that they only needed samples of the body parts for testing and not everything or I would have stopped them.” She also claimed that she overheard someone in the mortuary saying that Ganesh’s body bore several marks of violence.
The woman said two persons were arrested in connection with her brother’s death but were released one week later. When she enquired about the case, the woman said a senior police officer told her that the DPP was waiting on the doctor’s report. She also said that she later learnt that the DPP was not satisfied with the report, which listed the cause of death as drowning and ordered that the body be exhumed. She said the DPP was informed that some body parts were missing but the order stood. The exhumation was done in the presence of relatives, morticians and ranks from the Criminal Investigation Department in Berbice. The woman said the doctor questioned a mortician about the missing body parts and he said that the parts were at the hospital. The woman claimed the doctor informed them that the police were supposed to sign and collect samples of the body parts and send them to be tested at the lab. She also said the doctor told her relatives that based on his understanding of the circumstances under which Ramcharran died, there is no way that the man could have died by drowning. She said the doctor also said that he would not have written that on the report.
Relatives told this newspaper that they are afraid that their brother would be denied justice. They said it has been rumoured that the morticians have destroyed the evidence; the body parts. The man’s sister told this newspaper that her brother was a drug-user but she was upset when the police and media reports had referred to him as a “junkie.” “He may have been a drug-user but we always hoped that one day he would stop. He was our brother and nobody had the right to kill him like that,” she said. “They killed my brother for a bicycle and the hurtful thing is that they got back the bicycle. I can never come to grips with this and sometimes I feel like screaming. But I cannot live with myself if justice is not served in his cause,” the distraught woman said.
