TABUK CITY, Kalinga – The body of Mike Gocal, 41, single, maintenance worker in Doha, Qatar, now lies in state at his residence in Bantay, this city, amidst strong suspicions from his family that his death was not accidental.
Maria Deborah Bulawit, 30, Gocal’s niece who also works in Qatar and had accompanied the body home, said that the victim’s roommates discovered his dead body morning of November 17 face down in his cubicle with the lower portion of his body on the bed and the upper part hanging from the bed with the right side of his face pressed against the floor.
Bulawit showed the notification of death which stated that the cause of death was “multiple intracranial hemorrhage due to blunt head trauma.”
She said that according to Dr. Sarmad Abdulelah Majeed, the forensic doctor of the Ministry of the Interior who conducted the autopsy, there are three possible ways by which blunt head trauma could be incurred: a person falls from a high place; a person faints and falls with his head hitting a hard object; force is applied on the head by another person.
The family could not believe that either of the first two could have happened because the bed of Gocal is only one and a half feet high and his cubicle barely enough for his bed.
Bulawit also said that an accident was not consistent with the cuts in the right eye, on the back of the left foot and on the lower abdomen and likewise the bruises all over the face and on the hands of the victim.
Bulawit could not also believe the statements of Gocal’s two roommates – a Filipino and a Sri Lankan – that they did not notice anything that night because the individual cubicles have no door shutters and the beds are visible from the outside.
She said that the testimony of the Sri Lankan is particularly odd because he claimed that when he came home at around midnight, he noticed that Gocal was already in the position he allegedly died in but he did not do something because he also saw the victim asleep in that position on two different occasions in the past.
Bulawit had requested the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in Tuguegarao City to conduct an autopsy on the body but the NBI said that they will just await the results of the autopsy conducted by the Qatar authorities.
Bulawit does not have a copy of the medico legal results as the prosecution had not yet acted on her request for a copy when they left Qatar on December 12.
She said that the request of the Philippine embassy in Qatar for copies of the police report and the medico legal results was not accepted by the prosecution because the investigation is still ongoing.
When Bulawit requested for a copy of the medical legal from Majeed, the doctor told her that the document is already with the police.
“The Embassy told me that they cannot intervene until the result of investigation is released at which they could file a motion for reinvestigation just in case the family is not satisfied with the result,” Bulawit said.
She continued that in the case they are not satisfied with the results, they could hire a lawyer for the conduct of the reinvestigation and the filing of a case if warranted.
She said that the police had told her they could not just file a case because there is no suspect and no witnesses at the moment.
According to her, the police said that there are times when it takes years to solve a case and that they had promised that even after the repatriation of the body, they will continue investigating.
Also pending when she left Qatar is the result of the DNA test on the samples of what looked like blood on the side of the cabinet near the bed of the victim.
“There was a red color on the side of cabinet. It looked like blood and that it was wiped with something. If that is blood, then it is a possible indication of foul play,” Bulawit said.
Bulawit said that there was also blood on the floor near the head of his uncle which the investigators said he could have vomited.
Bulawit is also waiting for the action of the telecommunications authorities on her request for retrieval of the contents of the inbox and sent items of the three cellphones of her uncle.
“I was the one who took the three cellphones from the room of my uncle. I am suspicious because all the inbox and sent items are empty. Only the call register in one of the cellphones was left intact. I had requested the government telecommunications authorities to retrieve the messages of my uncle but I left Qatar before they five days for them to act on the request was up,” Bulawit told the Zigzag Weekly.
She expressed the hope that in the end, justice will be done for her uncle.**Estanislao Albano, Jr.
