Kevon Felmine

PH taxi dri­ver Af­te­ba Hug­gi- ns will ap­pear be­fore a Siparia mag­is­trate to­day, charged with the rape of a fe­male Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice con­sta­ble.

Hug­gins, 33, of South Oropouche, was charged yes­ter­day with at­tempt­ed mur­der, rape, false im­pris­on­ment and rob­bery by Sgt Gokool.

Hug­gins, who is mar­ried and has three chil­dren, was ar­rest­ed on Mon­day af­ter a man­hunt was or­dered by South West­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt In­raj Bal­ram. A team of of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing In­sp Ram­phal, Sgt Gokool, Cpl Ram­lochan, WPC Vesprey, PC Swan and PC Nar­ine, found him in the South Oropouche area. Po­lice said a trace showed he has a pend­ing court mat­ter for rape.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the SRP was ex­pect­ed to re­port for du­ty at a polling sta­tion to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty for Mon­day's Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

She told po­lice that she en­tered a taxi in La Ro­maine around 3 am and was the on­ly pas­sen­ger.

The dri­ver stopped at a ser­vice sta­tion for fu­el but in­stead of tak­ing her to the polling sta­tion af­ter­wards drove to the se­clud­ed area in South Oropouche, where he robbed her of jew­el­ry and her po­lice jack­et. He then raped her un­til she fought with him and was able to get away.

It was al­leged that when she ran off, he fired two shots be­hind her but the bul­lets missed and the gun stuck. Yes­ter­day, in­ves­ti­ga­tors from oth­er dis­tricts in­ter­viewed Hug­gins in re­la­tion to rel­a­tive of­fences in their area.