Resh­ma Ra­goonath

A Princes Town man, de­scribed as a "patho­log­i­cal thief" has been sen­tenced to a to­tal of 48 years with hard labour af­ter plead­ing guilty to 16 of­fences, in­clud­ing house break­ing and lar­ce­ny. An­tho­ny Ab­dool, a fa­ther of one of Bo­nan­za Street, was jailed on Tues­day by Princes Town Mag­is­trate Alexan­der Prince who told him: "You are a patho­log­i­cal thief, who has good tech­niques for break­ing in­to hous­es.

"Peo­ple must be al­lowed to en­joy their prop­er­ty un­in­ter­rupt­ed. You must leave their prop­er­ty alone."

Ab­dool was ar­rest­ed and charged with a to­tal of 16 of­fences, in­clud­ing bur­glar­ies and lar­ce­nies be­tween No­vem­ber 2010 and March 22, this year. He plead­ed guilty to all of­fences which oc­curred in the Princes Town dis­trict. Prince or­dered that Ab­dool serve three years on each charge. The sen­tences are to run con­cur­rent­ly. Ab­dool was ar­rest­ed by Cpl In­shan Teeluck and PC Wen­dell Manohar, work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sgt Don Ga­jad­har and Sgt Ian Re­beiro.

Po­lice pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Dwight Halls told the court that Ab­dool had four pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions for lar­ce­ny.

The court heard Ab­dool was charged with steal­ing a to­tal of $95,636 worth of gas tanks, cash, jew­el­ry, elec­tron­ics, house­hold ap­pli­ances and al­co­holic bev­er­ages, in­clud­ing scotch, be­tween No­vem­ber 2010 to March 2011. Ab­dool, who did not have a lawyer, asked for le­nien­cy be­cause he had a young child.

Prince said he would be le­nient but "can­not be too le­nient."