Harry Roy Veevers: Why the body of a British tycoon has been in a Kenyan mortuary for 11 years

BBC News

a day ago

A Kenyan magistrate this week expressed the hope that a British property tycoon would finally "find rest in eternal peace", after his body had spent 11 years in a mortuary.But this week's conclusion to the decade-long inquest into Harry Roy Veevers' death in 2013 still leaves many questions unanswered.It was a case that involved accusations of murder by poisoning, rancorous legal proceedings, the exhumation of a body after almost a year and ultimately divided four siblings – two sons from his first marriage and two daughters from the second.In one hearing, the sisters, Hellen and Alexandra, were reprimanded by the magistrate for shouting out that a witness was lying and threatened with spending time in a cell, reports said.In another, Hellen Veevers emerged from the courthouse with a message she had written on her vest-top: "My daddy was not murdered."Despite the lengthy inquest into the death of the wealthy 64-year-old, the magistrate, David Odhiambo, found that the cause of death could not be determined "due to the level of [the body's] decomposition" after spending so long underground. He ordered that the corpse be released to the family for reburial at a place of their choice.An unsatisfactory ending that could lead to further disputes. Lawyers for both sides told the BBC they were considering their next steps."When you have a family split down the middle, how does the court say the remains should be released to the family, when both sides have been fighting since 2013?" said Francis Kinyua Kamundi, representing Mr Veevers' sons, Richard and Philip.
From the start of his detailed 95-page ruling, the magistrate acknowledged the deeply entrenched feud between the family members."Although the death of a loved one often brings survivors closer through the inevitable grieving," he wrote, "The emotions associated with death can also tear survivors apart".This was definitely a case of the latter."What happened soon after his burial tore the family apart and marked the beginning of a legal drama," according to Mr Odhiambo.On one side of the case were the sons and on the other were Mr Veevers' second wife, Azra Parvin Din, along with their daughters.The children were living in the UK, while their father and Ms Parvin Din, who had been together for more than 30 years, were living on the Kenyan coast.The family feud started after his death on Valentine's Day 2013, at his home in Mombasa where he had long settled and had an extensive property portfolio. The children then travelled to Kenya.The drama began the moment they arrived.It was Saturday 16 February, a day before the burial.According to Richard Veevers' court testimony, Ms Parvin Din was agitated when questioned about the deceased. His brother Philip also told the court that she had initially refused his request to view his father's body.Ms Parvin Din said he had died of a heart attack.When they finally saw their father the following day, Richard said he "noticed redness in the face and the lips were purple and pink", according to the magistrate's summary.Tensions seemed to escalate over Ms Parvin Din and her daughters' reactions to the photos that Philip had taken of the body – including demands that he should delete them, the brothers said.In the magistrate's ruling, he said Alexandra Veevers had testified that "she did not see any marks on her father's body… and that she only saw the face since the body was wrapped in a cloth… She stated that they asked for the videos and pictures but Richard and Philip refused to give them out and she didn't understand why they did not want to share the photos".Mr Veevers was buried shortly afterwards without a post-mortem or police involvement.It was Ms Parvin Din's "decision that the deceased should be buried without post-mortem and did not consult anyone," the court ruling said. Nor did she inform the police about the death, stating that she was not aware that she had to report it.The Islamic burial, done quickly according to tradition, further raised suspicions from his sons, who said their father was not Muslim and had been buried under a false name.
According to the court documents, Richard Veevers "questioned why their father was being buried as a Muslim yet he was a Christian and he was told that if buried in an open cemetery, people would dig him up and steal gold from his body".Ms Parvin Din testified that Mr Veevers had converted to Islam.The brothers also accused Ms Parvin Din and her daughters of poisoning their father, so that they could inherit his multimillion-dollar portfolio – which they vehemently denied. A further complication is that there does not appear to have been a will.Unconvinced by the circumstances surrounding his death, the sons filed an application for the exhumation of their father's body and a formal investigation into the cause of death.A court order for exhumation was granted on 28 April 2013. However, the body was not dug up until 31 January 2014 - more than nine months later.The lawyer representing the sons has blamed the delay on the opposing side, citing repeated "frustrations" that stalled the process.By the time the exhumation could happen, the body had significantly decomposed.In the final ruling this week, the magistrate said that "due to the level of its decomposition" at the time of exhumation, it was too hard to say what had led to his death."The cause of death of the deceased remains unknown and as such nobody can be called to answer to any charge," he said.Over the years, the case has passed through the hands of numerous magistrates and judges, all trying to weave through the haze of unanswered questions and delays, to find the elusive truth.The magistrate, Mr Odhiambo, noted that when it first began, he was just starting out his legal practice and would read about it in the newspapers, with "no idea that almost a decade later I would be presiding over the case".In January last year, the inquest had neared its end - after years of hearings, a magistrate ruled that Mr Veevers' death was not suspicious.However, it was soon reopened after his sons successfully challenged the ruling at the High Court. Citing irregular procedures it referred the case back to a magistrates' court, allowing them to submit new evidence.Mr Odhiambo highlighted other issues that plagued the "convoluted case," including conflicting forensic reports submitted by different pathologists.One pathologist had traced a "highly toxic substance", cyhalothrin, on both the body's remains and the soil where his body was exhumed.
But the magistrate noted that this evidence had been called into question as samples had reached the UK four months after exhumation and they were not in the containers they had originally been packed in. Two other pathologists in the case did not find any traces of the toxic substance in their samples."The experts showed to us that there could be different interpretations about a subject [such] that the lay person is left wondering what to believe," Mr Odhiambo said.He said a lot of things had happened soon after Mr Veevers' death, but it was not possible to determine whether the "acts of commission and omission" by different parties in the case could be tied to the cause of death.He suggested that the parties ought to have handled the matter differently.The doctor who first attended to Mr Veevers should have advised Ms Parvin Din to report the death to the authorities and insisted on a post-mortem, he said.Dr Salim Omar's failure to do so, he observed, had contributed to the suspicions surrounding the circumstances of the death. The doctor has since faced disciplinary action from the medical regulatory body for his handling of the matter.As for Ms Parvin Din, the magistrate said, nothing she had done or not done was enough to find her responsible for Mr Veevers' death.And yet, despite the finality of the ruling, the end result is a body that has remained in a mortuary for more than 11 years is still suspended in legal uncertainty, caught between siblings with irreconcilable wishes.It is not a choice either side would willingly make.The sons have all along argued that their father was a British citizen and should be buried in the UK, while his second wife and her daughters have wanted him to be reburied in Kenya.The court acknowledged that determining Mr Veevers' final resting place was "nerve-racking" because of the absence of formal legislative provisions to guide burial disputes in Kenya.It was also a "tough" decision because Mr Veevers did not ascribe to a specific custom, and no will had been presented to show that he wished "to exit the world in a certain way".Nor was there any evidence to "show that he had a sour relationship with any of his close family members so as to exclude anyone from claiming his body".The magistrate stated that he would not wish to interfere with who would be given the body but urged them to seek legal redress from another forum. He also noted that the dispute over inheritance was still pending in another court.Mr Veevers' long wait for "eternal peace" will not be over any time soon.
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