A member of the special constabulary is among four persons arrested by the police during a search at a Princes Street house on Tuesday night in connection with the abduction of Jiffi Lubes owner, Farouk Kalamadeen.
An unlicensed .32 pistol along with five matching rounds was also seized from the house, a police statement yesterday said.
According to the statement, about 8:30 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 have been arrested and are in police custody assisting with the investigations, the police statement said. It is not clear whether the men are also being questioned in connection with Kalamadeen’s abduction.
Weeks after with no sign of him or a ransom demand, several questions continue to be asked as regards the real motive behind the disappearance of the Jiffi Lubes owner.
During several interviews with this newspaper, the former motor racer’s relatives have expressed optimism about his safe return.
Police had previously arrested three men, but released them later after they did not glean anything substantial. Family members when questioned yesterday said they had not heard any word from the businessman or his abductors. They said however that they will continue to hope and pray for his safe return.
Stabroek News had been told that Kalamadeen might have been picked up by foreigners with whom he had problems, but his wife, Nariman Kalamadeen, had said that was not so.
It had been reported that unidentified men snatched the businessman while he was walking along the Houston Public Road on the morning of April 2. The 54-year-old 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 Back Road area, interviewed almost all the security guards in the block but no one had a clue as to where the former motor racer might be.
Two weeks ago, the businessman’s sister-in-law, Member of Parliament Bibi Shadick 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, said such rumours abound but the man’s relatives have 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.
