After weeks of speculation, reports and arrests, missing Jiffi Lubes owner Farouk Kalamadeen was believed found dead this morning a stone’s throw away from the headquarters of the Guyana Police Force.
Ironically, the body was found around the same time that the man disappeared exactly four weeks ago. His abduction and subsequent death raise serious questions about the police’s ability to solve these cases and whether Eve Leary had activated its anti-kidnapping squad.
“We are accepting that the body is his because his son has seen the body and knows his father,” Kalamadeen’s sister-in-law Bibi Shadick said this morning. However, she said relatives would ensure that DNA tests were done for confirmation. Shadick said the family was extremely busy and could not talk when Stabroek News made contact this morning, but she insisted that relatives had accepted that the body was Kalamadeen’s and had taken the word of his son who went to the scene when the discovery was made.
The discovery of the body was preceded by an attack on the East La Penitence Police Station last night. (See centre pages)
Two days after the businessman’s disappearance, Crime Chief Seelall Persaud when asked whether the police had activated its anti-kidnapping squad, said there was no need to do so as there was no certainty that Kalamadeen had been kidnapped. He later confirmed that the businessman was abducted and informed that he had been grabbed by men in a dark-coloured vehicle.
Kalamadeen was on one of his routine jogs around the Houston, East Bank Demerara area, on the morning of April 2 when he disappeared. Eyewitnesses reportedly told police that he was picked up by men in a dark-coloured vehicle.
The relatives of the 54-year-old former motor racer and the security forces had conducted numerous checks in and around the Houston neighbourhood, but other than apprehending a few suspects they had collected no substantial evidence. During several interviews with this newspaper, the businessman’s relatives had expressed optimism about his safe return.
Only last week Wednesday, a member of the Special Constabulary was among four persons arrested by the police during a search at a Princes Street house on Tuesday night in connection with Kalamadeen’s abduction. An unlicensed .32 pistol along with five matching rounds was also seized from the house, a police statement had said.
According to the statement, about 8:30 last Tuesday night, while conducting investigations into a report of abduction, ranks searched a house on Princes Street, Georgetown, where the weapon and ammunition were found. Four men were arrested.
Prior to last week, the police had arrested three men, but later released them.
Stabroek News had been told earlier that Kalamadeen had been abducted by foreigners with whom he had problems, but his wife, Nariman Kalamadeen, had said that was not so.
Kalamadeen left his D’Aguiar Park, East Bank Demerara home around 6 am on April 2 to go on his daily jog. He was last seen wearing a blue sweat suit, track boots and a cap. Family members said they had checked every corner in the Houston, Mandela Avenue area and interviewed almost all the security guards in the block but no one had a clue as to where the former motor racer might be.
Mrs. Kalamadeen told this newspaper in an interview on April 3 that it was clear her husband was being held against his will, but for reasons she did not know.
The businessman’s wife said that when he had left his home that morning he did not have his cellular phone with him but this was not strange, as he did not usually carry it when exercising. She said it normally took him 30 minutes to complete his exercise.
Mrs Kalamadeen said then that from all appearances her husband might have been snatched as soon as he exited the gated Barrington Place, D’Aguiar Park community, noting that none of the security guards along the route he walked every day had seen him that morning.
Two weeks ago, Shadick had told this newspaper that the people who were holding him were confused. She asserted that relatives were not giving up hope. Shadick also had said that in Guyana whenever someone wanted to kill you they would do it. Reacting to reports that Kalamadeen might have been held over some transaction, Shadick, an attorney-at-law and member of parliament, said such rumours abounded but the man’s relatives had not given them any credence. She told this newspaper that they had received a telephone call from overseas where the caller informed them that an official working on behalf of the government said that Kalamadeen was being held by a local drug enforcement agency. Shadick said too that there had been rumours that he was being held by the US.
Stabroek News was told that Kalamadeen, apart from operating his automobile service centre, was also involved in gold mining. Back in 2002 at the height of the crime wave gunmen believed to have been the prison escapees had attempted to rob a house in Section ‘K’ Campbellville. Kalamadeen had told this newspaper that he responded to the attack. At the time, he was residing in the area.
