Pathologists battle it out in Narandas trial

THE Rajiv Narandas murder trial turned into a battle between forensic experts yesterday, with veteran University of Pretoria pathologist Professor Gert Saayman strongly criticising the forensic report of independent pathologist Dr Reggie Perumal.

Perumal, of Durban, is a defence witness and is also on the defence team of athlete Oscar Pistorius, who is accused of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

Saayman, a state witness, said he was “surprised and disappointed” with the wording on Perumal’s report. “There is no question that the report contains dogmatic statements that could mislead the court,” he told the Alexandra Magistrate’s Court.

In effect, Perumal’s forensic report found that it was possible that a swordlike instrument could have caused the fatal wound suffered by victim Veenand Singh, 32, for whose murder Narandas is standing trial.

This finding is consistent with testimony by witness Paroshen Soorian, who said the main aggressor in the fight that led to Singh’s death was Narandas’s friend Jenaide Charles, who wielded a “long wooden stick or cane, which held a sword”.

While Saayman did not dispute that the murder weapon could have been a sword, he said it could just have possibly been a knife. Equally, he did not dispute Perumal’s finding that the wound cut horizontally through both lungs. His objection, he reiterated, was to the “dogmatic, misleading and inappropriate” conclusions Perumal had drawn in his report.

“If an expert takes a position, he needs to set out the premises of that position,” he said, which Perumal had not done. “As experts we are very limited in trying to conclude exactly how a wound is caused, as there is a multiplicity of factors involved. You can’t, therefore, come to dogmatic conclusions as to how a wound was caused.”

In earlier evidence, Perumal denied under cross-examination by prosecutor, Adele Barnard, that it was his intention to mislead the court, or that his findings were dogmatic in their approach. Rather, they were based on probability, he had said.

The case was postponed again yesterday, to July 3, with Narandas’s counsel, advocate Mannie Witz, saying afterwards he might call Narandas himself as the final defence witness.

Asked if he was prepared to be a witness in his own defence, Narandas said, “I am well prepared. I have been prepared from the day I was charged.” Narandas is out on R5 000 bail. The incident involved a fracas between Narandas and his friends and Singh and his friends, which unfolded at 4.30am in the car park of the Shoukara night club in Sandton on July 13, 2008. Narandas’s group allegedly set upon Singh and his group after a series of jibes between the two groups inside the night club.

Soorian, part of Singh’s group, testified that he’d seen Narandas fetch a “weapon” from under his car seat, then hold it above his head. Soorian admitted, however, that he hadn’t seen Singh being stabbed.

The trial is now in its fifth year, and at one point turned comical yesterday, as Narandas, impeccably dressed as usual, was apparently awarded the duty of switching off, with a remote, the noisy air-conditioning in the courtroom each time it sporadically switched on and drowned out the evidence. “I see the accused is employed to control the air conditioning,” magistrate Reiner Boshoff bemusedly commented.

Narandas was accompanied by a glamorous woman, who he declined to name – but suggested in an e-mail he might be engaged to – as well as a tall, well-built man with a mohawk hairstyle who he said was his bodyguard.