Prakash Ramadhar, lead attorney for the families of three divers in the ill fated Paria pipeline accident, has written a letter to Paria Chairman, Newman George, regarding evidence relating to the incident in which four divers died.
During a media briefing held today, attorney Ramadhar said the letter calls on Mr. George to preserve all evidence from before, on and after that fateful day.
Ramadhar and his team are representing the families of Yusuff Henry, Fyzal Kurban and Christopher Boodram.
He also said all company officials should be placed on a leave of absence or suspended pending the outcome of the investigations launched into the tragic diving accident.
“We have looked at the evidence and at the end of the day, Paria will be ultimately liable. If there is any effort to distort investigations, we will pursue civil and criminal action,” Ramadhar said.
He said the opportunity to save the men was cut short when a named company official decided not to send other divers in to save the men.
According to Ramadhar: “The highest urgency was necessary. We also want to know what authority the Coast Guard had to prevent the loss of lives.”
“We have evidence as to who gave the instruction. We want to know the logic behind that. Imagine you play God without the science. What if there was an air pocket? We have seen many natural disasters that people are located and saved. That decision to say the men were dead was to be made by a medical practitioner,” Ramadhar said.
The letter issued to George also reads: “In seeking our client’s interest at this stage, and given that some of the guilty parties in this calamity continue to work at PFCL and have unfettered access to material that may form the corpus of evidence against them and given the chronology of events relayed to us thus far by our clients, we, on behalf of the families, demand that you take all necessary steps to immediately preserve and protect any and all records inclusive of audio, visual and digital records, documentation, reports, logs, notations, contemporaneous records and statements relating to the incident which occurred.”
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