British family feud turns inquest into a tragedy of lies, pain

Hellen Veevers (left) and Alexander Veevers during the burial of their father Harry Veevers on February 17, 2013. For nearly two years Mombasa residents have been treated to a bitter feud between two branches of the family of the late British property tycoon, Harry Roy Veevers. (PHOTO: KELVIN KARANI/ STANDARD)

For nearly two years Mombasa residents have been treated to a bitter feud between two branches of the family of the late British property tycoon, Harry Roy Veevers.

Veevers died on Valentine’s Day in 2013, at his ornate Nyali residence. Harry lived large. He came to Kenya nearly 20 years ago in the company of Arza Parveen Din, a British Muslim woman, as his partner. He married, or seems to have married, Arza after divorcing his first wife, Florence Marvis. At the time of divorcing Florence, he had two sons with her – Philip and Richard. Harry would go on to get two daughters with Arza – Helen and Alexandra.

The two arms of Harry’s family are now tangled in a complicated legal battle over how he died and his vast estate. The contest broke out soon after Harry’s burial. His children by his first wife, Florence, have done battle with Azra and her daughters for the past two years. The battle has swung round and round.

At stake is not just Harry’s vast estate, but also a number of legal and medical professional reputations. It is a veritable titanic contest.

As the struggle goes through a medley of permutations, it has placed reputations of rival pathologists and a physician – Dr Salim Omar – on the line. Dr Omar was the physician first called into Harry’s house when he collapsed in 2013. Both legal and medical professionals have questioned Omar’s handling of the matter. The doctor now finds himself in the High Court, seeking to save his professional standing and his career, too. Dr Omar has been adversely mentioned at the judicial inquest into Harry’s death at the Magistrate’s Court in Mombasa.

The doctor certified that Harry had died of cardiac arrest. He did this without undertaking an autopsy. He went on to release the body to Azra for burial without notifying the police about the death. That was not all. Earlier, he had gone on to move the body from the residence to the morgue at Pandya Memorial Hospital without involving the police. Soon after, Harry was swiftly buried as a Muslim, in an Islamic cemetery. Was this normal, or was Dr Omar part of a conspiracy to conceal murder in the family? These are the questions the protagonists in this legal drama have wrestled with, for close to three years now.

*****

Richard John Veevers and his brother Philip were restless about the circumstances surrounding their father’s sudden death and swift burial. Why the rushed burial without a postmortem examination? And why bury their father as a Muslim in a Muslim cemetery? Harry had never been a Muslim, so far as they knew. While he was divorced and estranged with their mother Florence, they nonetheless kept visiting Harry in Kenya. They knew that Azra was a Muslim woman. Yet at no point had their father told them he had taken up Islam. They were somewhat confounded at the turn of events, but allowed the burial to go on, it would later emerge.

The two gentlemen believed their father’s apparent Islamisation after death was a convenient – and possibly pre-planned – ploy to get rid of his body. If he was presented as a Muslim in death, he would need to be buried without undue delay. Philip and Richard wanted to put their doubts to test and to rest the matter once and for all.

Harry’s two sons obtained the exhumation orders from the High Court. They also got the authority to carry out a postmortem examination. An autopsy performed in 2013 revealed that Harry may have been poisoned. Three pathologists, including a former chief government pathologist, Dr Moses Njue, found traces of cyhalothrin pesticide in the wet soil in Harry’s exhumed stomach tissues. They concluded that he had died from poisoning.

*****

Philip and Richard filed a complaint with the Kenya Medical and Dentists Practitioners Board (KMDPB), on professional misconduct on the part of Dr Omar. They sparked off a lengthy investigation by the board. Among many other people, the board interviewed a consultant pathologist and forensic specialist, Dr Andrew Kanyi Gachii, who, like Dr Njue, has since testified before the judicial inquest.

On April 25, 2016, KMPDB found that Dr Omar had “acted in an unethical manner” by removing Harry’s body from the scene of death to the mortuary “without informing or involving the police.” The report further stated that Dr Omar had “filled the death notification without indicating whether he had treated, examined or performed a postmortem examination on the deceased”.

The board also found that Dr Omar had issued a death certificate without involving the police. He had released the body to Azra for burial without following the lawful and professional path. The board also said Pandya Memorial Hospital had similarly erred in releasing the body for burial without involving the police, although Harry had not died at this facility. Today, Dr Omar wants the High Court to overturn the board’s findings against him.

*****

While the autopsy concluded that Harry had been poisoned, Dr Omar had recorded the cause of the tycoon’s death as “cardiopulmonary arrest due to myocardial infarction or stroke.” And while the board found Dr Omar’s conduct after the death of Harry unprofessional, its conclusion on the autopsy only threw the spanner in the works. The government analysts had found what they called a “highly toxic pesticide” in Harry’s remains. The board brought in a Dr Alexander Allan Richard, a forensic analyst from the UK, to conduct a separate autopsy. His toxicological conclusion was that there was no such poison in the tissue samples supplied to his laboratory.

*****

On December 2, the court recalled Dr Njue to clarify his earlier claims that Dr Omar had certified, without performing an autopsy, that Harry died of heart attack. Dr Njue had testified that it was beyond doubt that Harry had been poisoned to death, with a pesticide. He had denounced a hypothesis being pushed by the other side that the Briton had “committed suicide, because he was medically troubled.”

Harry’s sons allege that Azra and her daughters Helen and Alexandra killed Harry. They say that at the time of his death, Harry had found for himself yet another woman. They say that he wanted to marry her. Accordingly, it is alleged, Arza and her daughters killed him so that they could not only forestall the marriage, but also inherit his vast estate.

For their part, Azra and her daughters have presented a medical report of their own. Analyzing Harry’s health for seven years before his death, the report says he had suicidal thoughts after suffering several medical problems, “including erectile dysfunction.” But, last month, Dr Njue testified that available evidence on this matter is inconsistent with the theory that Harry committed suicide. Dr Njue has argued that although all human beings harbour some suicidal thoughts, men of Harry’s age, 64 when he died, rarely fulfill these thoughts. And when they do, he says, they are unlikely to resort to poison.

Dr Njue has hypothesised that at 64, Harry, who was a licenced gun holder, would have shot himself with his gun. Alternatively, he could have leaped to death from a building, if indeed he intended to take his life.

But Dr Gachii introduced a new twist when he testified last week, trashing Dr Njue’s evidence. Dr Gachii boasted that he was more qualified than Dr Njue. He said he was basing his evidence on Dr Allan’s UK report, which stated that it was difficult to tell what Harry died from. He said he was the one who sent tissue samples from Harry’s body to Dr Allan in the UK. Yet there are claims that it was Helen, Arza’s daughter, who sent the tissues. The insinuation has been that the samples may have been substituted.

Instructively, Dr Allan admits in his report that the tissues arrived in his laboratory nine months after exhumation. He adds that in theory, any poison in them could have deteriorated within this period. This throws the possible cause of the death quite wide open.

“I can authoritatively tell you that the cause of the death of Veevers is not known because the findings after toxicological analysis of the tissues recovered from Veevers’ grave did not find any trace of pesticide,” said Dr Gachii. He goes on to say that only very small traces of the pesticide were found in the grave. That the amounts were “so tiny and incapable of causing deat h.”

Dr Gachii has claimed further that the pesticide is not as highly toxic as claimed by the Government Chemist’s report presented to the court. He concludes that the traces of the pesticide in the soils could have come from flowers that were lain on Harry’s grave after burial. Finally, Dr Gachii questions capacity of the Government Chemist to provide reliable scientific data.

Where will this matter end up? Time will tell. For now, the battle of wits goes on – complete with professional reputations in the mix.