Four men, including a businessman, fingered in the kidnapping and murder of Guyanese Narad Sookoo and Tomeshwar Doobay, were expected to be arrested last night in Trinidad.
According to reporters at the Trinidad Guardian, Trinidad police yesterday stated that they had obtained warrants to arrest the men, which they were expected to execute last night. Stabroek News was told the men would be slapped with kidnapping and murder charges and they more than likely would appear in court tomorrow. This newspaper was also told that the men, one of whom had allegedly accused the two men of stealing TT$800, had been under surveillance since the men’s bodies were discovered and the police have now decided to arrest them.
The businessman, for whom Sookoo, 28 and Doobay, 21, worked, is alleged to have ordered the hit on the men, which the three others carried out. The bodies of the two men were found in the river at an abandoned landfill in Felicity, Chaguanas on Sunday morning. They had been tied up and bundled into a car on Saturday around 4 pm. Each of the bodies bore a single gunshot wound to the back of the head.
The businessman was yesterday described as someone of a “suspicious character” who was involved in “underhand business”.
On Tuesday, the Guardian had reported that the police unearthed information that the two men were accused of stealing TT$800 from the home of the businessman. The report had quoted the police as saying that the men worked at the businessman’s premises, but left after he physically assaulted two other workers, whom he accused of stealing the money. The report had stated that the two men were upset over the beating of their co-workers and after they left the businessman accused them also of stealing the money.
Yesterday Rostom Khan, a Trinidadian who said he is married to Sookoo’s sister, told Stabroek News by telephone that as far as he knew the money was returned to the businessman. He said the now dead men were not the ones who took the money; rather it was the other two men who had been beaten and they returned the cash following the blows. “It can’t be that [the money] that cause them death because the money was given back,” the man said. According to the brother-in-law, as far as he knew the men were working for the same businessman when they were killed. He said the other men were fired following the theft.
Khan said they had not received any information from the police of any arrest in the matter, but they as family members could not “round off we mouth and say anything; we have to give the police a chance to do their work.” Asked if the men had reported any threats to their lives, Khan said as far as he knew no one had threatened the men, adding that if that had been the case Sookoo would have at least told his relatives. He said the men would have also reported the threats to the police.
“They were not scared or anything like that,” Khan said, adding that relatives are shocked at their deaths and in their quest for justice they would want to find out the motive behind the killings. He said Sookoo’s wake is being held at his home as the young man’s parents, who travelled from Guyana following the tragedy, are staying there. Sookoo would be cremated today in Trinidad.
Doobay’s mother yesterday said that she has made arrangements with David Sampson’s Funeral Home in Trinidad to have her son’s body returned to Guyana, where it would be cremated. The woman had told Stabroek News on Tuesday that she could not find a motive for her son’s killing and had lamented that he left Guyana for Trinidad to make a better life for himself. “If the government been a provide work fuh dem, dem wont a go to look fuh work in Trinidad, but work nah deh here,” the woman had said on Tuesday.
Khan told Stabroek News that the men went to Trinidad about two years ago with their wives and children.
