Bhagwan Boodhram, who was found dead in a ditch along the Meten-Meer-Zorg Public Road died of multiple injuries caused by an accident, an autopsy performed yesterday at the Ezekiel Funeral Home indicated.
The man’s brother, Dindial Boodhram, said the results of the post-mortem examination showed that his brother Bhagwan, 43, who resided at 58 Sideline Dam, East Meten-Meer-Zorg sustained severe brain damage, fractures to the skull, a fractured cervical vertebrae and a broken rib cage.
Boodhram’s body was discovered on Sunday afternoon in front of a church, hours after residents said they had been awakened in the wee hours of the morning by a loud noise on the road, which sounded like if something had been hit.
The daughters of Boodhram are demanding that justice be served and that the man who killed their father be charged and locked away in prison. “This is a grave injustice to us,” the man’s oldest daughter said. She was deeply aggravated that the driver was released hours after the police had detained him. “Enough evidence is there…,” she stated. “Persons saw the bus and they even heard him saying that he had struck a horse down. The driver is cruel. It’s inhuman to see someone injured and drive away. It’s like he hit an animal. That man does not possess a heart.”
She said an eyewitness who heard the collision that morning said that when she looked outside she saw the man and two other individuals lifting something and swinging it in the drain near the road.
The eyewitness said the driver then shouted out that he had just hit a horse. The eyewitness told the family that she had then returned to bed because it was normal for animals to be struck down in the night on the public road. However, the woman had taken down the bus’s licence plate number as a precaution.
Later that Sunday afternoon persons noticed a body in the waterway and quickly alerted the police. It was then that the eyewitness came forward and produced the licence plate number to the family. The minibus was found and the driver was detained. However, he was released the next day.
The family protested that it was an injustice, claiming that it was because the driver was related to a high ranking officer in the police station that he was released.
Boodhram’s brother was told by a police constable at the Leonora Police Station that the driver said he had indeed been involved in an accident around that area but he had not struck down Bhagwan Boodhram. The driver told the police that he had hit a horse and he had eyewitnesses to prove that he was telling the truth.
Some residents told Boodhram’s family that late Saturday night, a few hours before they heard the collision they saw the driver and a few other friends parked near a Chinese restaurant drinking. One eyewitness said that after they had heard the noise they saw the minibus driving away in the dark.
When Boodhram’s body was found pieces of shattered windscreen glass were also found about the body.
