Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

Po­lice have un­cov­ered a po­ten­tial clue in the kid­nap­ping of 23-year-old An­drea Bharatt that may bring them clos­er to find­ing her while two or­gan­i­sa­tions have of­fered cash in­cen­tives for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the re­lease of the Ari­ma Mag­is­trate’s Court clerk.

Crime Stop­pers has of­fered a $50,000 re­ward while Mode Alive’s Gary Aboud has pledged $25,000.

Se­nior po­lice sources told Guardian Me­dia that the clue was un­cov­ered at an­oth­er lo­ca­tion in San­gre Grande about 20-min­utes’ dri­ve from Non­pariel Road, Fish­ing Pond, where po­lice had searched on Mon­day with army of­fi­cers.

The ex­haus­tive six-hour search on Mon­day of the forest­ed area turned up emp­ty-hand­ed.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing they al­so be­gan their search at the same lo­ca­tion to­geth­er with sev­er­al hunt­ing groups who were giv­en per­mis­sion by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith to as­sist the po­lice with their search in that area.

The hunters who met at San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion lat­er met up with the of­fi­cers at Non­pariel Road.

Some of the hunters told Guardian Me­dia that they were hap­py to lend po­lice a help­ing hand in their search. They came from sev­er­al parts of Trinidad to join in the search.

Af­ter search­ing the Non­pariel Road area, po­lice, to­geth­er with the hunters, head­ed to an area north of that lo­ca­tion af­ter re­ceiv­ing some elec­tron­ic in­for­ma­tion.

The dis­cov­ery of the clue was made by in­ves­ti­ga­tors short­ly af­ter 1 pm at this par­tic­u­lar lo­ca­tion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the clue was found by the law­men af­ter a six-minute trek in­to a forest­ed area.

The lo­ca­tion was tem­porar­i­ly se­cured and po­lice gath­ered what they need­ed at the site.

Due to the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the in­for­ma­tion, Guardian Me­dia gave se­nior po­lice sources the as­sur­ance that they would not go in­to any specifics, to en­sure that their in­ves­ti­ga­tion is not com­pro­mised.

“We ap­pre­ci­ate that,” one se­nior of­fi­cer told Guardian Me­dia.

Sources said they were hop­ing to un­cov­er fur­ther clues that could as­sist them in fi­nal­ly find­ing Bharatt.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors say they in­tend to re­turn to the lo­ca­tion to­mor­row to do fur­ther search­es for oth­er po­ten­tial clues that can lead them in the di­rec­tion of Bharatt.

And while the po­lice will con­tin­ue their search­es, Crime Stop­pers yes­ter­day is­sued a $50,000 re­ward for any in­for­ma­tion that could as­sist in find­ing Bharatt. They en­cour­aged any­one with in­for­ma­tion to call Crime Stop­pers anony­mous­ly at 800-TIPS(8477) or sub­mit a tip on­line at www.crimestop­per­stt.com.

Crime Stop­pers gave the as­sur­ance that any in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed would be anony­mous and the col­lec­tion of any re­ward is al­so anony­mous.

Mode Alive’s Gary Aboud made the of­fer via his Face­book page.

“An­drea Bharatt is 21-years-old (sic) and she is in dan­ger, her fam­i­ly is in dis­tress...we don’t know them, but she is one of ours and you, if you are lis­ten­ing and you have knowl­edge please re­port it. Any­thing re­mote­ly sus­pi­cious that you see, please re­port it,” he said.

He added: “If it leads to her re­cov­ery, we will pay you $25,000. We’re not go­ing any­where. Please share this video. Let’s get back An­drea Bharatt. Then we’ll have more rea­son to cel­e­brate than all of Car­ni­val could have giv­en us. Please get back An­drea Bharatt.”

Bharatt was tak­en on Fri­day af­ter she went in­to a Nis­san Ver­sa mo­tor­car that was a sup­posed taxi with a fe­male co-work­er. Her co-work­er dropped off in Cleaver Heights, Ari­ma. Bharatt’s home was ten min­utes away, but she nev­er made it home.

One of the al­leged kid­nap­pers had told her fa­ther on Fri­day night —when her fa­ther spoke with her kid­nap­per a sec­ond time af­ter her fa­ther had ap­peared ag­gres­sive the first time on the phone with him—“for get­ting on so I will send your daugh­ter’s ears for you.”

The man had al­so asked for a sum of mon­ey. How­ev­er, there was no fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Bharatt’s kid­nap­pers.

Over the week­end po­lice de­tained five sus­pects for ques­tion­ing in­to her dis­ap­pear­ance.

One of the sus­pects, Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed, was well known to the po­lice, and the 37-year-old San­gre Grande man de­scribed as the mas­ter­mind be­hind the kid­nap­ping is a “sex­u­al of­fend­er, firearm of­fend­er, drug of­fend­er, rob­bery of­fend­er, lar­ce­ny of­fend­er, and a kid­nap­per.”

An­oth­er of the sus­pects in cus­tody is the 24-year-old son of a po­lice of­fi­cer and has been the on­ly one to date to se­cure the ser­vices of a lawyer.