Dear Editor,
Kidnapping is big business in Trinidad. That is right, it is organized as a business with various criminal gangs involved in different aspects of the operation – planning, actual kidnapping, transporting, holding and protecting the victim, contacting the family’s victim, negotiating the ransom, collecting the fee, and releasing the victim. Kidnapping of prominent Indians occurs with regularity in Trinidad. And the kidnappers have turned the crime into a complex business operation to avoid easy detection. They have collected tens of millions of dollars a year over the last four years.
Kidnapped victims are stripped of their dignity and humanity. A kidnapped victim in Trinidad recently told of her plight to a Guardian newspaper columnist, Anand Ramlogan, a distinguished attorney, who published her story last Sunday.
As Ramlogan noted from listening to the woman’s story, there is an abduction team (A) which monitors the victim’s movement and snatches the victim. This team hands over the victim to the transportation team (B) at an undisclosed location that was only made known to it after a few calls from someone who gave careful, specific directions.
Team A does not know where Team B takes the victim just in case the police managed to arrest anyone from Team A. Team B is responsible for transporting the victim to the hiding spot and handing her over to Team C (the guard team) which is responsible for taking her to the place where she would be imprisoned until the negotiations for payment of a ransom were successfully concluded. Team B did not know where Team C was actually taking her to detain her.
Team D separately contacted the family to negotiate the ransom. Team E visited the family in full religious wear to say that its organization could find her for a fee and that the police were a waste of time because they were probably in cahoots with team D. Everyone in Trinidad knows the religious group.
The victim revealed: ‘I was stripped of all my dignity’. While in captivity, she is raped by the guards who take turn violating her. When the guards change, there are more rapes to fulfill the fantasies and desires of the criminals.
Ramlogan writes: “At some point, her body became numb and lifeless, paralyzed by the humiliation” of being repeatedly raped.
Finally, the negotiation for ransom is completed. The family pays the ransom. She is released blindfolded. The family is happy to get her back alive. She went to a neighbouring island to run a test for pregnancy and HIV. Her worst fear is confirmed. She is pregnant and had an abortion. She did not say what the HIV test revealed. But she is not intimate with her husband.
As she told Ramlogan: ‘I was still kidnapped even after my release. They kidnapped part of me for life’.
She said she was living against her own will because she did not want to disappoint those who had sacrificed so much to have her back. No one has been arrested in connection with her kidnapping and they are free to continue kidnapping.
A very prominent businessman, Vindra Naipaul, was kidnapped a month ago. Police have in custody some of the conspirators of the kidnapping but the police can’t place their hands on where she is kept if she is alive.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram