Four persons are now in police custody assisting with investigations into the suspected murder of taxi driver Bomeshwar Sukhdeo who disappeared last Tuesday and one has since confessed to carjacking and being an accessory to murder.
The quartet was held following the discovery of the man’s car parked under a house at Herstelling, East Bank Demerara on Wednesday morning. The discovery was made by one of the missing man’s relative. Police were immediately informed and a woman who was in the house at the time was arrested. During questioning she told investigators that two men brought the car to the home for her husband to ‘spray over’. Her husband operates his business at another East Bank location. She was later released from custody.
Three men including the woman’s husband and the owner of a taxi service were also held. One of the men, a resident of Agricola, according to reports reaching Stabroek News told the investigators that he hired Sukhdeo’s taxi and later picked up another man at a city location. The taxi driver, he claimed was subsequently shot dead.
However the resident’s alleged accomplice has disputed the man’s accounts saying that all he did was organize the sale of the car.
From all reports, it was the owner of a taxi service located on the East Bank that took the stolen vehicle to the spray painter’s house.
After the car was detained it was positively identified as Sukhdeo’s based on the number printed on the engine.
Meanwhile, relatives of the man who is still being declared as missing by the police, yesterday remained convinced that the badly burnt corpse found at the side of the road leading to Mocha Arcadia on Wednesday afternoon, is his.
Persons searching for the taxi driver stumbled upon the body when they ventured into the area. Since his disappearance searches were conducted countrywide but no clues were found.
Giving an update on the recovered car and the macabre discovery, Crime Chief Seelall Persaud confirmed the arrest of four men and said that advice will soon be sought in the matter.
Asked after identification of the burnt corpse, he said that DNA samples will have to be sent overseas as Guyana does not have such facilities.
This newspaper has been reliable informed that Sukhdeo’s relatives are prepared to assist the police to get the DNA samples out of the country.
One relative said yesterday when contacted that though identification is difficult she is convinced that it is indeed him.
The woman said that she last spoke with the taxi driver at 12:49 pm on Tuesday about picking up his children from school. However one of the children contacted her around 4 pm and said that he had not been picked up.
The woman said that this prompted her to call Sukhdeo’s cell phone but she kept getting his voice mail. Now in tears, she told Stabroek News that from that moment she knew that something sinister had happened to him.
After the burnt body was found, police spent several hours combing the bushy area for clues. Government pathologist Nehaul Singh who was transported to the scene to look at the body told the media that based on the presence of maggots, it could not have been there for more than a day.
He said too that due to the state of the body he could not determine how the man died but based on his assessments, the body was that of an East Indian male, not more that 25 years of age and based on measurements was five feet ten inches tall. This description almost matches that of Sukhdeo.
