Confused, frustrated and heartbroken is how Chandrawatie Nandlal, the common-law wife of former Centrin worker David Francis, says her family feels after a High Court injunction was granted late Friday night to stop Francis’ funeral.
However, Nandlal said she intends to challenge the injunction tomorrow.
Speaking to the Sunday Guardian from her Perseverance, Couva, home yesterday, Nandlal said she was home around 11 pm on Friday when attorney Gerald Ramdeen and a police officer came asking for her.
“With all the things they are saying about me, my daughter started crying because she did not know what was happening,” Nandlal said. “They came and gave me the injunction, telling me I could not do the funeral again.
“I am so confused, I don’t know what to do...nobody knows what is going on with me and I am hearing talk that this woman is coming with her attorneys to take my house from me and my children.”
Francis was found hanging at the home he shared with Nandlal and their two children on April 21. He was one of some 200 workers who were given notices of retrenchment by Centrin on February 25 and at the time of his death, relatives told the media Francis was depressed over mounting debts.
An autopsy done on April 25 by pathologist Dr Valery Alexandrov, at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, revealed Francis died as a result of hanging.
However, Francis’ substantive wife, Donna Francis, along with other relatives, questioned the autopsy findings and had another autopsy done on his body on Friday. The second autopsy was done at a funeral home by Prof Hubert Daisley and the results differed from Alexandrov’s findings.
Donna Francis, through attorneys Ramdeen and Suschilla Ramkissoon-Mark, applied for a High Court injunction on Friday after the autopsy results and High Court Justice Ronnie Boodoosingh granted the request.
But Nandlal is questioning how Donna Francis could have more rights to Francis’ body than she.
“We have been living together for 19 years, he and her (Donna) got married and were together for five years before he and I pick up. When they break up, he went his way and she went hers, they didn’t have any communication and everything David and I have, we make from scratch.
“I think it is just money they are after because Centrin management had promised to pay David’s severance and to pay for his funeral,” Nandlal added.
“We just want to lay him to rest and start to heal but they are attacking us on all sides. I am going to hire my own lawyer and challenge the injunction. Right now, I am looking for a lawyer to help me because I really don’t know what is going on.”
In the meantime, Nandlal said she was going to stop holding nightly wakes for David as the expense has become too much for her to bear.
“Just to make two announcements that the funeral was put off cost $700 and every night I keep the tents and chairs is an extra cost. I really don’t want to do it, but I have to...I can’t afford to do wake every night.”