Investigators probing the murder of Canadian citizen Nicholas Ramkissoon Jaipaul experienced hurdles in tracing calls on the victim’s cellular phone due to the lack of cooperation from a telephone company, Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum said.
Blanhum yesterday told Stabroek News that soon after the matter was reported, investigators assessed the need for a telephone trace to be conducted on Jaipaul’s phone.
However, during this process, Blanhum said investigators experienced an additional hurdle in dealing with a “not so cooperative” telephone company.
According to Blanhum, telephone tracing has the potential of saving lives and as such it plays a vital role in investigations of this nature.
As such, he said the Guyana Police Force (GPF), hopes that this does not recur in the future.
“The Guyana Police Force (GPF) had the additional hurdle of dealing with a not so cooperative telephone company. It is our hope that in future engagements, the importance of these requests are treated with some degree of urgency as lives are at stake,” Blanhum said.
The police on Thursday discovered burnt remains, suspected to be those of Jaipaul in some bushes along the main access road at Molesen Creek.
Three suspects, including two brothers are presently in police custody.
The two brothers are the sons of a maid employed with Jaipaul’s grandfather. They were arrested after one was spotted at Jaipaul’s residence mere hours before he disappeared last Sunday evening.
Blanhum yesterday said that the police were granted an extension to detain the suspects for an additional 72 hours.
He said legal advice will be sought at the “earliest” opportunity.
Jaipaul, 23, arrived in Guyana back in January with his grandfather, Ramkissoon Jaipaul, 86.
The duo were residing at the grandfather’s house in Number 69 Village, Corentyne, and were expected to leave the country in May. They were forced to remain in the country due to travel restrictions instituted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The grandfather had said that he left the youth awake and went to bed last Sunday around 7.30 pm.
However, the following morning, he received a strange call asking if he was aware that his grandson was not in the house, which led him to file a police report.
Ramkissoon had noted that he suspected that the reason behind the call was for a ransom although it was not asked for.
One of the brothers, who is the prime suspect in the matter, reportedly told investigators that his brother helped him to burn Jaipaul’s corpse in an effort to get rid of the remains.
Stabroek News had previously reported that the police received a statement from the prime suspect, who alleged that he was hired by a rice farmer to kidnap Jaipaul and kill him and then call his grandfather for a ransom of $50 million.
He told investigators that he was ordered to kill the grandfather when he showed up with the ransom and that he would be paid $500,000. The rice farmer, who is the alleged mastermind, is also in police custody.
A senior police source had told this newspaper that one of the brothers now in custody visited Jaipaul last Sunday afternoon to obtain some soursop leaves.
Police had initially held one of the brothers for basic questioning but it was after they discovered the men’s history that they took a closer look at them.
The source had confirmed that the prime suspect was arrested for the murder of his stepfather back in 2014.
The stepfather was reportedly chopped and stabbed several times about his body, after which he was thrown in a nearby pond that was said to be infested with alligators. The prime suspect and his mother, the maid, were arrested then, while the other brother went into hiding.
The suspect was eventually charged in 2014 but later freed in 2016 after a no-case submission was accepted at the High Court in Berbice.
