Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice say teacher and fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant Ko­mal Ma­haraj, who was re­port­ed miss­ing for a sec­ond time last Fri­day, was hid­ing out in the Pi­ar­co ho­tel he was found in on Mon­day.

Po­lice re­port­ed that Ma­haraj, 41, was found alive and well at Touch­down Ho­tel in St He­le­na and told po­lice he was there for his safe­ty af­ter they in­ter­ro­gat­ed him.

Se­nior po­lice sources told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that Ma­haraj be­lieved his life was in dan­ger and went in­to hid­ing. How­ev­er, he did not give the po­lice any in­for­ma­tion on who was threat­en­ing his life or why and for how long.

Po­lice con­firmed that Ma­haraj, who was re­port­ed miss­ing by his wife, was found alone.

Ma­haraj’s wife re­port­ed that he left for work around 6.40 am on Fri­day, af­ter telling her that he was go­ing to the Aranguez Hin­du School to teach mu­sic lessons that af­ter­noon. She said she re­ceived a mes­sage from him via What­sApp around 1.07 pm that day and had no fur­ther con­tact with him af­ter.

Cam­era footage showed Ma­haraj was last seen at around 3.30 pm last Fri­day, walk­ing through the front gate of their Lyle-Lane Street, Fe­lic­i­ty home and walk­ing to a sa­van­nah wear­ing a pair of blue jeans, a black long-sleeved sweater and a pair of sun­glass­es.

Last year, Ma­haraj went miss­ing on Ju­ly 19 and claimed he had spent 14 days in cap­tiv­i­ty be­fore be­ing re­unit­ed with his fam­i­ly on Au­gust 2. De­tails about his dis­ap­pear­ance then and where he was dur­ing the pe­ri­od re­main a mys­tery.