The passports that were found in possession of drug convict Barry Dataram and his reputed wife were legitimately issued travel documents which were tampered with, according to acting Crime Chief Hugh Jessemy who said yesterday that the probe has now been widened to find those behind this highly-skilled forgery.
Speaking to Stabroek News yesterday Jessemy said that investigators managed to track down the original owners of the passport using the passport number. He said based on what was gathered one of the passports was stolen from a car which was parked near the Pegasus Hotel and this theft was reported. With regards to the second passport, he said that the person it was issued to could not explain losing it and did not report it to the police.
“The forged passports are genuine passports…the bio data page were forged. They were issued to persons”, he told said.
Dataram on Tuesday pleaded guilty to three charges including forging a passport and was sentenced to a total of three and a half years in jail. Anjanie Boodnarine who had fled Guyana with Dataram days before the verdict in their drug trafficking case was handed down, denied the same three charges laid against her.
Dataram told Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan that Boodnarine was forced to flee and that he had obtained all the forged documents. The couple was found with the forged documents when arrested in Suriname last Friday.
Dataram’s passport, #R0376916 carried the name “David Persaud” and the bio data appeared to be his while Boodnarine’s passport, #R0341097 carried the name “Christine Persaud”. The bio data listed for her appears to be genuine.
Stabroek News was also told that there was no official record of the couple leaving Guyana. Dataram’s original passport was collected by the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU) following his arrest in April and was part of the agency’s exhibits in the drug trafficking case against him. He was found guilty in absentia while Boodnarine and two other defendants were found not guilty due to a lack of evidence.
Jessemy told Stabroek News that it will take “some skill” to do what had been done with the passport.
One source yesterday expressed the view that this could be the work of a former immigration official and yesterday’s revelation by Jessemy raises questions about the frequency of this illegal act. However the source pointed out that there are some persons who are genuinely good at replicating things after studying them.
According to Jessemy, while Boodnarine remains before the court, the police are now looking for the person who changed the bio data. “We are looking to see who can actually do this”, he said.
Hours after the couple was returned to Guyana on last Saturday, the Ministry of Presidency announced that according to the Minister of Citizenship Winston Felix, a full investigation has been launched to determine the circumstances under which the couple was issued with the documents and that those who are found culpable would face the “harshest possible action.”
Minister Felix was reported in a Ministry statement as saying that the passports are now in the possession of the police and that the investigation will seek to determine the circumstances under which they were issued, who and what documents were involved in their preparation and the method of the husband and wife’s departure from Guyana.
The statement said that the Department of Citizenship, which has responsibility for immigration services, inherited a number of challenges related to the integrity of systems, when the new administration took office in May, 2015 and has been working to correct them.
