The body of a labourer was pulled from the Canal Number Two conservancy on Tuesday morning, two days after he went missing on Sunday afternoon after he had gone for a swim.
Dead is 40-year-old Orvin Durga of 237 Belle West Housing Scheme, Canal Number Two. The post-mortem which done by pathologist Dr Nehaul Singh yesterday morning, showed that the man had drowned.
According to the Region Three police commander, Assistant Commissioner Simon McBean, the incident was reported minutes to nine on Sunday night despite the man being missing since 1 pm on the day in question. The report he said was made by the relatives of the dead man and stated that Durga had gone swimming with friends when he went under. A search was made by the friends and when they did not find him, they conveyed the matter to the family who then reported it to the police. However, the family is telling a different story.
When this newspaper visited the home of the deceased, relatives had gathered there trying to make sense of what occurred. According to a brother of Orvin, Melvin Durga, his brother had gone on a picnic with a farmer whom he was employed with along with several other persons. He said the persons Orvin was picnicking with showed up at his home minutes after six on Sunday evening. They reported that the deceased had gone under and was missing. He said at the time the family was not told that Orvin had gone under hours ago before and it was only after further inquiry that they learnt he went down around 1 o’clock that day.
“He working with them people at them farm and he guh with them at a picnic on the [conservancy dam]. He guh, he drink, he go overboard, the people them see when he guh down. Them left he and go into the farm according to what them seh, do what them had to do and then they decide to search for him until hours after”, Melvin said. Asked whether anyone had gone searching in the water for the deceased, Melvin said that by then it was night and neither the man’s employers nor they could have searched the conservancy.
A search was not done in the water until the following morning but they came up empty-handed. The man’s body was found floating two days later by his employers and other neighbours living along the conservancy dam some three hundred feet from where he had disappeared. According to Melvin the family was contacted around 6 am Tuesday by the dead man’s employer who said they spotted his body floating only moments before.
According to the deceased’s family, Orvin knew how to swim. Up until the autopsy findings they were concerned that foul play may have somehow been involved and would have resulted in the man’s death. However with the post-mortem revealing that he died by drowning, the questions remain as to why when Orvin went under, no one tried to look for his body and waited until hours later to tell the family.
The deceased was said to have been employed with the same farmer for several months. He never had a home of his own and would sometimes stay at Melvin who lives at Sisters Village or at another brother in Belle West.
Police Commander McBean said that the persons the deceased were spending the day with when the incident took place were questioned and sent away. Investigations into his death are still ongoing.
