Police to consult DPP on buried foetus

EASTERN Division police said yesterday they may have to consult with the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Geoffrey Henderson concerning the circumstances in which a seven-month-old female foetus was buried in a backyard.

Police sources told Newsday that while there are provisions in the laws of Trinidad and Tobago for persons to be charged with “concealment of birth” and “procurement of miscarriage,” they have not yet received the “necessary evidence” that could lead them to arrest and charge anyone with these offences. Section 58 Chapter 11:08 of the Offences Against the Persons Act states that “if anyone is delivered of a child, every person who, by any secret disposition of the dead body of the child, whether the child died before, at, or after its birth, endeavours to conceal the birth is liable to imprisonment for two years.” Section 56 of the same Act states that “every woman being with child, who, with intent to procure her own miscarriage, unlawfully administers to herself any poison or other noxious things, or unlawfully uses any instrument or other measures with like intent, is liable to imprisonment for four years.”

On Sunday evening, officers of the Eastern Division dug up a foetus from a three-foot hole behind a house on Oropouche Road, Valencia. Following the discovery, police detained a 45-year-old security guard from the same area. He was released late Sunday evening. A 39-year-old housewife remained warded at the Sangre Grande Hospital up to late evening. Police sources said she was haemorrhaging. Police sources told Newsday that an anonymous caller contacted the Valencia Police Station around 3.30 pm Sunday, saying that they had seen a man “bury something” at the back of a Valencia house. Residents also told the police that a woman was pregnant for several months then appeared not to be pregnant, but that there were no signs of a child. Officers under Insp Thomas and including PC Thomas of the Eastern Division visited the scene, dug up the foetus, which was viewed by District Medical Officer Dr Roxanne Tantoco. PC Phillip of the Valencia Criminal Investigations Department is investigating.