An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

As tears flowed and prayers were of­fered for the safe re­turn of kid­napped dou­bles ven­dor An­isha Ho­sein-Singh last evening, her fam­i­ly begged those re­spon­si­ble to re­lease her safe­ly and un­harmed.

A dis­traught male rel­a­tive told Guardian Me­dia, “If they make a call, we will pay the ran­som. What­ev­er they want, we will give it to them. We just want her back safe and in one piece.”

Sad­dened by the ap­par­ent lack of in­ter­est by the au­thor­i­ties as the woman’s in­jured hus­band had not been in­ter­viewed by in­ves­ti­ga­tors up to eight hours af­ter the in­ci­dent, Ho­sein-Singh’s rel­a­tives as­sured they had no griev­ances with any­one that could lead to her be­ing tar­get­ed.

Ra­jiv Singh was shot in the left side of the face as he at­tempt­ed to keep the kid­nap­pers from tak­ing his wife. The cou­ple has a three-year-old boy child who cel­e­brat­ed his birth­day last Fri­day.

Ho­sein-Singh, 27, along with her hus­band and oth­er work­ers, were set­ting up the tents for Sauce & Sons Dou­bles out­let along the East­ern Main Road, El Do­ra­do, around 5.50 am when a sil­ver B15 car with four masked men pulled up.

A record­ing cap­tured by near­by se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras shows two armed men run­ning in­to the busi­ness place while a third kept watch, fol­low­ing which gun­shots were heard, and then two men were seen drag­ging Ho­sein-Singh in­to the wait­ing ve­hi­cle, which sped off in a west­er­ly di­rec­tion.

It was al­leged the kid­nap­pers had not con­tact­ed the fam­i­ly up to 3 pm yes­ter­day.

In an in­ter­view with talk-show host Ian Al­leyne around 2.30 pm, Ho­sein’s hus­band and her fa­ther, Ahamad Ho­sein, con­firmed the fam­i­ly had not re­ceived any calls or vis­its from the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Squad (AKS) or any oth­er arm of law en­force­ment.

Singh was in­ter­viewed by two po­lice of­fi­cers at the hos­pi­tal and lat­er left the in­sti­tu­tion on his own.

The car that Ho­sein-Singh was bun­dled in­to was found aban­doned at Llu­en­go Vil­lage, Mara­cas Val­ley, St Joseph, sev­er­al hours af­ter the kid­nap­ping. The ve­hi­cle was parked on a mud­dy em­bank­ment in the moun­tain­ous area.

Res­i­dents liv­ing close to where the car was found said they were aware of the in­ci­dent as it had been re­port­ed on so­cial me­dia.

Of­fer­ing words of hope that Ho­sein-Singh would be found safe and alive, they ex­pressed sur­prise that such ac­tiv­i­ties had oc­curred in the qui­et area.

Mean­while, it ap­peared to be busi­ness as usu­al yes­ter­day in El Do­ra­do, in the vicin­i­ty of where the kid­nap­ping oc­curred.

By 9 am yes­ter­day, sur­round­ing bars and oth­er es­tab­lish­ments were opened as nor­mal. 

Sev­er­al busi­ness op­er­a­tors de­clined to talk, ex­cept to say the dou­bles op­er­a­tors were quite pop­u­lar and al­ways man­aged to at­tract a crowd.

One man who lives close by de­scribed the kid­napped woman as “a re­al nice girl.” He added, “She is al­ways re­spect­ful and kind; she nev­er rough up no­body and al­ways qui­et.”

Guardian Me­dia was told by an­oth­er man that it might be a case of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty, as he be­lieved the kid­nap­pers had con­fused Sauce & Sons Dou­bles with that of Sauce Dou­bles, which has been the tar­get of mul­ti­ple shoot­ings over the past sev­er­al months. 

Sauce & Sons is sole­ly owned and op­er­at­ed by Ho­sein’s fa­ther and broth­ers.

In the lat­est in­ci­dent tar­get­ing Sauce Dou­bles on May 12, a 19-year-old man was man­ning the stand set up along the South­ern Main Road, Cunu­pia, around 10.20 am, when a car stopped and a masked man got out. It was al­leged that the armed sus­pect told the work­er to tell his boss la­dy to look out for a call last Fri­day, fol­low­ing which he fired sev­er­al shots.

No one was in­jured in that in­ci­dent.

In March 2021, Amar Ho­sein was crit­i­cal­ly in­jured in a shoot­ing at his home in Or­ange Grove, Tu­na­puna.

In De­cem­ber 2020, Ka­reem Jervis was killed in a shoot­ing in Curepe Junc­tion. The dou­bles ven­dor had been em­ployed with Sauce Dou­bles and died af­ter gun­men opened fire on him as he was at work in a wrought-iron cage.

In Au­gust 2019, yet an­oth­er Sauce Dou­bles ven­dor was shot in the head and chest while at work. Shaz­ard Man­ick lat­er died at the hos­pi­tal. 

Guardian Me­dia was told yes­ter­day that the own­ers/op­er­a­tors of Sauce Dou­bles had left the coun­try fol­low­ing the lat­est threats.