When the MCB/NPF scam surfaced and hit the headlines, a high profile politician warned the police that before arresting a suspect the police must always take into consideration his or her status. This is Mauritius. Some people are untouchables. Well, to be honest, not only in Mauritius. In every class society, without exception, the most powerful and dominant economic class determines the? course. The state, which controls the police, is a bureaucratic-military machine, which functions in the interests of the economically dominant class*.

The Vanessa murder case could have been an open and shut case had it not happened in an impregnable society fenced with riches. There have been many intriguing questions in the press right from the beginning : the medical certificate issued in a hush by a private practitioner, the scene of crime scrubbed, the deceased, from a conservative Catholic family hurriedly cremated?

It?s seven long years now and the unsolved case has been haunting the population but in Mauritius we do not react unless it happens to us or unless we gain from it. When I read Vanessa?s sister in « l?express-dimanche » of 1st June this year, I decided to react because it was so touching.

I don?t know whether it is fear or superstition but it does give you the shivers to think that many of the key witnesses have met deaths under obscure circumstances but which have been easily, too easily, accounted for : the professional diver drowning in the west, the road accident in the north killing a regular visitor to the murdered residence and the police chief collapsing after landing in a foreign land. I earnestly hope the spell won?t be cast against me as well.

What is more intriguing is that two self-proclaimed associations, Mouvement Liberation Femme (MLF), an offshoot of Lalit to whom I am dedicating the opening paragraph, and, Justice (justice for whom ?), reacted to Vanessa?s agony by bestowing their blessings where they deemed fit.

Whether prime suspect Bernard Maigrot did it or did not do it is immaterial but superstitiously crossing his path would be bad for my health specially that I have high blood pressure and I am accident prone. I always avoid the black cat. Justice (one-man show ?) headed by Human Rights lawyer Jean-Claude Bibi and MLF (F for femme) justify acquittal on arguments based solely on confessions obtained under police brutality.

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On a very serious note, I contacted Raju Mohit who has become a reference in Commonwealth judiciary by successfully challenging the DPP?s constitutional and statutory grants of power (Privy Council Appeal No 31 of 2005). The Honourable Satnaraine Sharma, the Chief Justice of Trinidad Tobago, cannot not be clearer when he avers, "The powers of the DPP are not to be treated as a modern formula of ancient prerogative authority. They must be exercised within constitutional limits. (High Court, CV2006-01956)."

Raju Mohit strongly believes that the findings of the District Court cannot be simply struck off. After the marathon hearings which cost millions to the taxpayers, the magistrate must surely have based his ruling on solid grounds to recommend the case to be tried by the Assizes Court. It logically follows that there was a prima facie case and no one but the jury should have reached a decision. Not an individual. Now with Bernard Maigrot off the hook, the DPP?s office must show equal largesse in hunting down the Lagesse killer.

Dharumvir TAKOOR

? Reading : Connie White