Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 2000-07-25

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: With the, if you look at your picture, the discoloured body bag, that is what I lifted it with.

MR VISSER: Yes.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: That body bag was then placed into the blue body bag.

MR VISSER: Oh, I see.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: On the picture, that was mine, yes.

MR VISSER: That was going to be my next question.  That whole body bag was placed in another body bag and that was taken away?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: That is correct, yes.

MR VISSER: Alright.  Is it fair to assume then that in the course of the transportation, the remains landed up as they are on figure 2 of the photograph in front of you, by the time the photograph was taken?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: Yes, that is.

MR VISSER: What I want you to do is, first of all, you have now given the evidence about what you found there, and one of the things that you say at page 82(a)  of your report in Bundle 2, you refer in the second paragraph to the fact that
"... remnants of a disintegrated wooden coffin was found".

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: That is correct, yes.

MR VISSER: And then you go on to say
"... a large plastic body bag was observed at the depth of 1050 mm",
	that would be correct, would it?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: I am just trying to locate, yes, that is correct.

MR VISSER: That is correct?  Alright.  Coming to the next paragraph, when you cursory examined the contents, you found that the skull was covered by a whitish fabric.  What I want to know from you is, in your examination there, did you remove the whitish fabric, or did you leave it around the skull"

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: I would have left it in situ.

MR VISSER: Yes, for the pathologist who was going to do the post-mortem, to remove it?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: That is correct, yes.

MR VISSER: May I assume that in your five years, you have done a number at least, of post-mortems?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: Oh yes, certainly.

MR VISSER: Would you put it at a great number?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: Running into thousand, yes.

MR VISSER: Okay.  Fine, so, what I want to ask you then is from your experience, if you were, forget about this case for the moment, if you were to receive a body which you can best describe as being totally decomposed, and the body lands on your table in the mortuary, with a dress, does it land there with a dress or would the dress be removed before it lands on your table, by someone else?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: No, it will depend, most often we request that the clothing accompany the body, so the body will be sent to us as is, so that we can examine the clothing as well because it is imperative that we examine the clothing.

MR VISSER: Yes.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: Quite often, depending on the police officers at a crime scene, they may decide they know better and remove the clothing ... (tape ends) ... as far as possible, we try not to cut the clothes.

MR VISSER: Yes.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: We try to remove the clothes as intact as possible, because one of the things, as you probably know, clothing may facilitate in the identification of the deceased.

MR VISSER: Yes.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: And that is one of our priorities when doing an autopsy on a decomposed body.

MR VISSER: Yes.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: So most often, we would undress the body as we would undress a live person.

MR VISSER: Doctor, you know, I find that almost unbelievable.  If you have a body which is totally decomposed in a dress, how would it differ in, how would it make a difference in identification, in an identification process, whether you cut the dress off or whether you took it off carefully?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: No, what I omitted to say is the reason, the clothing is not used purely for identification, we will look at the clothing for other signs of trauma, for instance, penetrating incise wounds, or stab wounds.

MR VISSER: Yes.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: Or gunshot wounds, maybe we find gunshot residue, so this is why we try to preserve the garment as intact as possible.

MR VISSER: Yes.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: So that we may lay it out and examine it.

MR VISSER: Doctor, please try to be of assistance in this regard as well, if you can, if you cannot, please say so.
	In your experience where a body laying in the veld, completely decomposed, in a dress, what would normally be the position, the condition of that dress?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: I just want to sort of clarify something here.

MR VISSER: Please do.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: We differentiate between decomposition and skeletonisation.

MR VISSER: Yes, I have been told so, and I have been told I have been wrong in a certain assumption, so you don't have to rub that in.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: From the appearance here, this is a skeletonised body, more than decomposed.

MR VISSER: Yes?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: The clothing usually, coming back to your question, the clothing usually, depending on the exposure to the environment, may be altered by the environment in the sense that there might be fine growth of roots growing through the clothing, or the clothing may be brittle, the clothing may be destroyed by the bodily fluids that leak out of a body while the body is decomposing.

MR VISSER: Yes?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: And there might be insect bites on the clothing, so it can vary.

MR VISSER: Yes.  Insect infestation is one of the factors, but I am more concerned about the affect of the bodily fluids.  Would that be noticeable on a dress taken off a person that had completely decomposed inside that dress?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: Yes, in fact I have recently used dress from decomposed body and partially skeletonised bodies to try and obtain DNA where there was alleged rape.  So it is contaminated, it is soiled, it doesn't destroy it, but it does soil it.

MR VISSER: Would that be noticeable?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: It should be, yes.

MR VISSER: I don't suppose Exhibit 1, is still around, Chairperson?

CHAIRPERSON: It should be.

MR VISSER: I am just wondering, well, Exhibit 1, 2, 3.  I am just wondering whether the Doctor might be asked to look at that.

CHAIRPERSON: Ms Thabethe, is it available, Exhibit 1, 2, 3 for Dr Aiyer to look at?  Exhibit 1, 2, 3 and 4, the dress, the poloneck, the slip and the bra.

MR VISSER: I am sorry about having to put you through this, Doctor, but we are led by circumstances here.
	I want you to look at the clothes, particularly the dress, Exhibit 1, and I want you to consider whether you would have expected to find a dress in that condition after the body that was in that dress, had decomposed completely and the dress had been buried with the body, for 10 years?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: May I enquire, was the dress washed after ...

MR VISSER: No.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: It wasn't washed?

MR VISSER: No, not as far as we know.  I am going to tell you this, I will put it to you also so that you can consider that, apart from certain portions of the material that is frayed, I believe that if you washed it now, it is almost wearable, but please have a look at it yourself.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: There is certainly some soiling, particularly at the label on the other end, which may resemble bodily fluids.  This is a rather thin garment and I would imagine that is a bit of soiling there.

MR VISSER: Yes.  You are now trying to find spots on the dress?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: Yes.

MR VISSER: But my question to you is ...

CHAIRPERSON: He was asked to, so he is looking.

MR VISSER: Yes, no, no.  I am not criticising, Mr Chairman.  What the question really is, is that wouldn't you have found it to be far more obvious?

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: I am going to have to sort of maybe throw a spanner in the works here, but your question is supposing that the person was dressed in the correct position, with the dress lying as it should be.  What if the state of dress was altered, for instance...

MR VISSER: I accept that.

SAGRAM NOMICAN AIYER: If the dress was curled up to the top.