Fugitive cop surrenders on murder charge

A police officer who fled the country after he was re-indicted to stand trial for the murder of eight-year-old Daniel Guerra turned himself in to police on Saturday.

PC Darwin Ghouralal surrendered to San Fernando police on Saturday afternoon, two reliable sources told Sunday Newsday.

Sunday Newsday learnt that Ghouralal, of La Romaine, walked in the charge room of the police station and told the officers that there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest. He was immediately detained before taken to prison to await his trial.

Ghouralal was charged with the murder Guerra, of Bedeau Street, Gasparillo, in 2011. On February 17, 2011, the boy left home to go to a nearby parlour and went missing. Two days later, the child’s partially decomposed body was found in a river along the Tarouba Link Road, on the outskirts of San Fernando.

Guerra was a standard two student of Gasparillo Government Primary School. Three autopsies were done on the body. One found the boy died by drowning and another found he died from asphyxia. The third found that the boy died by homicidal asphyxia.

In September 2013, Ghouralal walked out the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court a free man after a magistrate upheld a no-case submission filed by his attorneys. The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions challenged the magistrate's ruling and a judge's warrant was issued for his re-arrest about a month later.

The warrant mandated that upon arrest, he is to be taken into custody to await a trial.

Ghouralal apparently left the country by plane before his arrest. Police did not give any information as to when Ghouralal returned to the country or where he had been.

The case had sparked a public outcry in 2011 with then prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announcing Daniel's decree as part of the State's effort to protect children.