THE FAMILY of Inverkeithing stab victim Colin Marr had their petition heard by the Justice Committee in a bid to help other families receive information after self-inflicted and accidental deaths.

Colin’s mum, Margaret Graham, and stepdad Stuart Graham, fought a painful battle for years as they tried to find out the truth following the fatal stabbing in July 2007.

The death of Colin (23) following a row with his fiancee, Candice Bonar, was initially treated as a suicide by police. However, his family soon suspected he had not taken his own life and began a long campaign to find out the truth.

At a Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) in 2011, Sheriff Alastair Dunlop overturned previous police assumptions that Colin killed himself and the Crown Office apologised to the family, admitting there were a series of failures in the investigation into his death.

Earlier this year, Stuart lodged a petition in an attempt to make sure other families would never have to go through the pain and struggle they did in trying to find out the truth.

The petition urges the Scottish Government to introduce the right to a mandatory public inquiry with full evidence release in deaths determined to be self-inflicted or accidental, following suspicious death investigations.

The petition was heard at the Justice Committee last Tuesday and Stuart said, “Honestly, it was a bit confusing.

"They covered it so quickly and rolled it into work going on for FAI processes.

"On one hand that could be good, on the other hand, they were relating it to the Cullen Report which didn’t really have anything to do with ours.

"We came away not really knowing what it meant, we don’t know the implications yet.

“After, we asked Willie Rennie to speak to the Justice Committee on our behalf.

"He told us it actually seems very positive in that they are taking more information from the Crown Office and procurator fiscal over the level of investigations carried out into 4000 deaths in the last five years.

"So it’s been put on the back-burner until then but then they’ll come back and review the petition again and hopefully we’ll get more involved again.

“We’re very much in limbo, and it will stay like that until someone agrees that something should be done. These things take years.” Talking to the Press about why he and Margaret had lodged the petition, Stuart said, “It was something that seemed obvious to us.

"The police tried to close Colin’s case down so easily – if we’d had more rights then all the issues we had could have been prevented.

"We’ve come across a lot of families who have been through the same thing.

“The petition is there to give you the option of how to get access. Families shout for an FAI because there’s no right to information without it.

"You have to do your own investigation to find things out. We were at the stage where 10 different officers were named in failing in Colin’s death – if he never had an FAI we’d never have found that out.

“Families have very few rights and it’s a rare occasion that an FAI happens.

"Families should have an absolute right for access to information.

"In England every unforeseen death is subject to public scrutiny and all we want is for families here to have the right to see all the information.

“When criminals are on trial they have the right to see all the information, so why shouldn’t families have the same?”