Derek Achong

Ren­nie Cool­man, the wid­ow­er of for­mer Xtra Foods chief ex­ec­u­tive Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man, will take the wit­ness stand at the Port-of-Spain High Court for sec­ond time when her mur­der tri­al re­sumes this morn­ing.Cool­man, a cam­pus man­ag­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), is the sixth wit­ness to be called by State pros­e­cu­tors since the high-pro­file tri­al be­gan late last month.

He start­ed giv­ing ev­i­dence last Thurs­day, but de­fence at­tor­neys could not com­plete their cross-ex­am­i­na­tion of him be­fore the end of the hear­ing, forc­ing him to re­turn to court to­day.Cool­man's tes­ti­mo­ny is ex­pect­ed to be fol­lowed by those of two po­lice of­fi­cers from the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Squad (AKS) who were part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion team as­signed to Naipaul-Cool­man's case.In to­tal, State pros­e­cu­tors are ex­pect­ed to call 73 wit­ness­es dur­ing the course of the tri­al, with 65 of them be­ing po­lice of­fi­cers.

While tes­ti­fy­ing be­fore Jus­tice Mal­colm Holdip and a 12-mem­ber ju­ry with six al­ter­nates last Thurs­day, Cool­man said he was hav­ing din­ner at his fam­i­ly's Radix Road, Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas home, on the night his wife was kid­napped.

He said his fam­i­ly's live-in house­keep­er Rasheedan Ya­coob was watch­ing tele­vi­sion in the liv­ing room, when they heard Naipaul-Cool­man's SUV pulling in­to their dri­ve­way. His step­daugh­ter Risha Ali, who al­so lived with the cou­ple, was in a sec­ond floor bed­room with her son. Both Ali and Ya­coob gave their ver­sion of the events while tes­ti­fy­ing in the tri­al a day be­fore Cool­man.

While un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, Cool­man and the two women all ad­mit­ted that they did not im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact po­lice when they first no­ticed that three gun­men had sur­round­ed Naipaul-Cool­man's car, as they claimed they were im­mo­bilised by fear.They all told ju­rors they hid in var­i­ous parts the house af­ter they heard a se­ries of gun­shots and were on­ly able to con­tact po­lice af­ter Naipaul-Cool­man had been tak­en away by her ab­duc­tors.

"I was not sure if the peo­ple was go­ing to come in­to the house to hurt me and my chil­dren," Ali said dur­ing her tes­ti­mo­ny.Dur­ing her al­most three hour con­tri­bu­tion, Ali be­came the tar­get of in­tense and per­son­al ques­tion­ing from de­fence at­tor­neys, which seemed to pro­voke her in­to giv­ing short and de­fen­sive re­spons­es to their ques­tions.

Ali was ac­cused of hav­ing a re­la­tion­ship with her step­fa­ther and "pri­vate din­ners" with him. She adamant­ly de­nied these al­le­ga­tions. The in­tense cross-ex­am­i­na­tion on­ly end­ed, when Holdip in­ter­vened to ask the rel­e­vance of ques­tions and Ali in­formed the court she was preg­nant and claimed she was feel­ing un­well.Ya­coob's ev­i­dence, which pro­ceed­ed Ali's, was rel­a­tive­ly short and did not at­tract much ques­tion­ing from the ac­cused men's at­tor­neys.

Cool­man's tes­ti­mo­ny dealt with main­ly what he saw when his wife was kid­napped on De­cem­ber 19, 2006, as well as his knowl­edge of sev­er­al ran­som calls that were made to his wife's younger broth­er Anand in the weeks fol­low­ing her kid­nap­ping.

His tes­ti­mo­ny end­ed dur­ing the cross-ex­am­i­na­tion of de­fence at­tor­ney Kwe­si Bekoe, who was ask­ing him if some­one pre­tend­ing to be a state at­tor­ney had ex­tort­ed him to avoid him be­ing pros­e­cut­ed in the case. The ques­tion drew an im­me­di­ate ob­jec­tion from pros­e­cu­tors, caus­ing the case to be ad­journed to to­day to fa­cil­i­tate le­gal ar­gu­ments over the is­sue.Be­sides the two fam­i­ly mem­bers and Ya­coob, three po­lice of­fi­cers have al­so tes­ti­fied in the tri­al.

Po­lice pho­tog­ra­ph­er PC Bren­ton Mack tes­ti­fied that he took pho­tographs of the crime scene from the kid­nap­ping, while po­lice first re­spon­ders Cpl Sime­on Guel­mo and Dolan Olivi­er told the court what they saw when they ar­rived at the busi­ness­woman's home min­utes af­ter the ab­duc­tion.The tri­al con­tin­ues at 9 am.