Hours after the lawyer representing the suspect in Keyana Cumberbatch’s murder issued a public appeal for help to buy his client’s asthma medicine, a pharmacist stepped foward and offered to fill the prescription. The suspect’s attorney Fareed Ali said he was contacted around noon yesterday by pharmacist Ernest Sankar, who responded to a report on the public appeal in the T&T Guardian yesterday. He said he had also been contacted on social networking site Facebook by several people who were willing to make donations.
Ali took the suspect’s prescription to Sankar’s Family Care Pharmacy, Dinsley Junction, Tacarigua, yesterday afternoon and was given the medication, valued at $1,154. Ali was expected to visit the suspect at the La Horquetta Police Station late yesterday to deliver the medical supplies. In a telephone interview, Ali said he was delighted Sankar had stepped forward despite his client’s public image as a suspect in the child’s murder.
“Mr Sankar has demonstrated that in T&T there are still open-minded people who have faith in the justice system,” Ali said. He also thanked the T&t Guardian for publishing his plea. “Without the report in the T&T Guardian we would not have found Sankar and my client would still be suffering without his medication,” Ali said. Contacted yesterday, Sankar said he felt compelled to answer after reading the report. “I took an oath as a pharmacist. He (the suspect) is a human being in need of medication, so I decided to help,” Sankar said.
Asked if he was not deterred by the suspect’s link to the child’s murder, Sankar said: “The law says he is innocent until proven guilty. If he is guilty, a judge, jury and God will deal with him.”