At around seven o’clock in the morning on Thursday, December 7, eight Antwerp police officers raided the home of Indian diamantaire, Nikhil Manilal, in the Antwerp suburb of Wilrijk. The officers had a warrant to conduct a house search. At the time, Manilal was at home with his wife, Sujata, his father, and a number of servants. According to witnesses, Manilal, managing director of Beltaj NV, suffered a heart attack while reading the warrant, and collapsed.

 

The servants in the home said they had wanted to call Sujata and Nikhil's father when Manilal suffered his heart attack. The two family members were in a different part of the house. However, police prevented the servants from calling on the family, apparently, to preserve the “moment of surprise” when confronting her as part of the investigation.

 

Only when it became clear that the 46-year-old diamantaire had passed away, some ten to 15 minutes later, did police call an ambulance. A servant in the home who was at the scene had wanted to comfort the dying diamantaire but was prevented from doing so. Dominique Reyniers of the justice department in Antwerp denies the charges. He claimed that an ambulance was called within a minute or so after the diamantaire’s collapse. In the meantime, police have already changed their version of events a number of times.

 

Nikhil Manilal had lived in Antwerp for the past 31 years.

 

The family along with some 500 Indian families involved in Antwerp’s diamond trade is particularly outraged that police pressed on with their investigation in spite of seeing Manilal collapse. “The police called the prosecuting judge, Chris Thys, who had ordered the search and told him that Manilal had collapsed but the judge ordered them to continue with the investigation,” said an indignant, Chetan Choksi.

 

While the ambulance arrived ten minutes later to treat Manilal, a critical 20 minutes had passed before Manilal’s wife or immediate family member were allowed to see him, according to the family’s cook, Mr. Ambaji, who was a witness to the entire incident. Ambaji told the Indian press agency INEP that, “the police did not even allow him to lift Mr. Manilal’s collapsed body to the family room to ease his discomfort, and just let him lie on the floor of the entrance to the house calling in vain for his wife upstairs."

 

The cook also said that police forbade him from calling Manilal’s wife when her husband went into cardiac arrest. Manilal was pronounced dead while friends and neighbors waited outside the residence without being able to see or help to revive the dying man.

 

In the midst of grieving family and friends, police sealed Manilal's safe and continued searching the house. Vijay Shah, managing director of Vijay Dimon and president of the Jain culture centre in Antwerp, said, “We are not against legal investigations and challenges, but it was inhuman that his family was not allowed to attend to him. This kind of inhuman thing could maybe happen in some third world country but not in a civil Belgium.”

 

Police Behavior (or “Inhumanity”) may Trigger Exodus

 

“The community is so in shock that they are thinking of leaving Antwerp after this inhuman act,” Shah added. This would be a blow to Belgium’s diamond sector in which Indians make up60 percent of the local rough and polished trade with a reported turnover of $36 billion. This trade constitutes approximately eight percent of Belgium’s exports.

 

HRD managing director, Freddy Hanard, said that he did not know what exactly happened but that an investigation is needed because “to continue a house search when someone is lying dead on the floor is clearly problematic. Even justice has some boundaries. That is humanity.” It is not known what triggered the investigation. The HRD is planning a special board meeting to discuss the tragic event. The meeting will be attended by the Prime Minister’s advisor for justice and security.

 

In the meantime, the family’s lawyer, Marc Huybrecht, has demanded an autopsy to uncover the exact circumstances surrounding Manilal’s death. "These are civil proceedings but we want undisputed evidence of how Nikhil Manilal passed away.” Huybrecht will also be filing a lengthy declaration on behalf of the family and witnesses to the examining magistrate that had ordered the investigation. “I will share the indignation that Nikhil was on the floor for a good number of minutes without attendance and without assistance and without family members.”

 

On Friday, the Antwerp diamond industry shut its doors in solidarity with the distraught family. The boards of directors of the Antwerp Indian Association and the Indo-Belge Diamantaires Association asked their members to close their offices for one day and, as it turned out, the entire diamond sector supported the closure, not just to show respect for the Nikhil Manilal’s family, but also to express its outrage for the conduct of the Antwerp police.

 

Details regarding services will be announced shortly.

 

(INEP contributed to this story)