Kidnapped Trinidad busi­ness­man Shel­don Sukhdeo yet to be found

Sheldon Sukhdeo
Sheldon Sukhdeo

(Trinidad Guardian) Three weeks af­ter he was ab­duct­ed by armed men, busi­ness­man Shel­don Sukhdeo is yet to be found by po­lice.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, po­lice sources said that while the in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been ac­tive­ly pur­sued by de­tec­tives of the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit since last month, they have not made sig­nif­i­cant head­way in crack­ing the case or res­cu­ing him.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Sukhdeo, the own­er of a used car deal­er­ship in cen­tral Trinidad, was ab­duct­ed in Clax­ton Bay on De­cem­ber 16.

Sukhdeo was dri­ving his BMW car with three Venezue­lan na­tion­als along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way when he was forced to pull over by a ve­hi­cle, which had blue lights sim­i­lar to those used on of­fi­cial po­lice ve­hi­cles.

The oc­cu­pants of the black Kia SUV, who were al­leged­ly wear­ing sim­i­lar cloth­ing as worn by po­lice, bun­gled Sukhdeo in­to their ve­hi­cle be­fore dri­ving off.

Sukhdeo’s friends were un­harmed and drove to his home where they re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to his fam­i­ly.

Three days lat­er, his fam­i­ly re­ceived a phone call from his ab­duc­tors, who de­mand­ed a $2 mil­lion ran­som.

Dur­ing the call, which last­ed a lit­tle over four min­utes, Sukhdeo was al­lowed to briefly speak to his rel­a­tives. Al­though rel­a­tives re­ceived sev­er­al oth­er fol­low up calls, the first was the on­ly time they were able to hear his voice.

It is un­cer­tain whether the fam­i­ly have since paid the ran­som.

Sukhdeo is the on­ly kid­nap­ping vic­tim, dur­ing the tenure of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who was not res­cued with­in days of be­ing ab­duct­ed.

On March 26, last year, his old­er broth­er Sheron was killed out­side the home of a rel­a­tive at Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road. Two months lat­er, Sheron’s broth­er-in-law Phillip Bas­sant was killed near to where in in-law was mur­der.