The police have sought legal advice on charging the father and son who are currently being held in connection with the abduction and beating of a Walton Hall, Region Two bus driver.
According to the Regional Commander Denise Griffith, the case file was sent to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for legal advice. In the meantime, the duo remains in custody while police continue to look for a woman and a vehicle linked to the crime.
Commander Griffith explained that police are not treating the case as a kidnapping but rather as an abduction as she noted that it apparently arose after the suspects claimed that the bus driver, Imran Khan, 25, also known as ‘Panko,’ had been engaged in illicit sexual relationships. The bus driver has denied such claims.
Khan had told Stabroek News that he was dragged out of his parents’ house on Monday night by two known persons. He alleged that they tied him up, forced him into the trunk of a car, and took him to Essequibo Technical Institute (ETI) road, where he was severely beaten and left to die.
The victim’s mother, Bhagpattie Khan, told police in her statement that her son had just arrived from Georgetown when he was pulled out of their house. According to her, two men and a woman, who disembarked from a ‘white and black’ Toyota Spacio, took her son by force around 7.30 pm.
The mother recalled that they dragged him, bound his hands with zip ties and beat him and then forced him into the trunk of the car. She said that the female suspect then told her that they were going to kill her son.
She also mentioned that before the abduction someone telephoned the young man and asked him to pick them up at the Supenaam Stelling but he sent his friend since his bus was at the mechanic’s shop. When the friend showed up with his bus, two men approached him and asked if he was “Panko” and they were disappointed when he told them he was not. They subsequently drove away.
Khan was rescued by a passerby, who took him to the Anna Regina Police Station, from where he was transported to the Suddie Public Hospital, where he was treated before being discharged. He has since taken investigators to the scenes where he was beaten.
