Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia

Jour­nal­ist joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

As a wor­ried na­tion ag­o­nised for 23-year-old An­drea Bharatt to be re­turned to her Ari­ma Old Road home safe­ly in Feb­ru­ary 2021, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is­sued a call for Good Samar­i­tans to join the search. Al­though well-wish­ers played a role, some were de­ter­mined to do more. Hunters from across the coun­try joined be­tween Feb­ru­ary 2 and Feb­ru­ary 4 that year, comb­ing east Trinidad’s forests for the young woman who was kid­napped.

The search came to a hor­rif­ic end with the dis­cov­ery of Bharatt’s body in the Heights of Aripo.

The tragedy, how­ev­er, birthed the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team (HSRT). Five days af­ter Bharatt’s body was found, 21 hunters ac­cept­ed an­oth­er call from the TTPS to as­sist. This time, with the Aripo Sweep—a com­pre­hen­sive search to find bod­ies in an area long sus­pect­ed of be­ing a dump­ing ground.

Af­ter a long day, the hunters, chat­ting un­der a tree, de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue their ser­vice to and for the coun­try. There, in essence, the or­gan­i­sa­tion was cre­at­ed.

The self­less sac­ri­fice of those present that day and those at lat­er search­es re­turned dozens of peo­ple home and al­so of­fered griev­ing fam­i­lies much-need­ed clo­sure. Be­tween 2,500 and 3,000 fam­i­lies whose loved ones have gone miss­ing have made use of the group dur­ing its ex­is­tence.

But now, there are three men, lead­ers of their re­spec­tive groups, claim­ing own­er­ship of HSRT: Sham­sudeen Ayube, Val­lence Ramb­harat, and An­jit Ren Gopiesingh. Once close al­lies, bit­ter dis­putes sent them sep­a­rate ways.

While each or­gan­i­sa­tion con­tin­ues to do hero­ic work, there is a bat­tle for own­er­ship. The mat­ter has al­ready reached the courts. And it seems to be a mat­ter of time be­fore it re­turns to the courts as an­oth­er le­gal ac­tion looms. Un­til that hap­pens, the ri­val­ry is un­fold­ing in the court of pub­lic opin­ion.

Many cit­i­zens be­lieve that the HSRT should re­ceive a Hum­ming­bird Medal for gal­lantry at this year’s Re­pub­lic Day Awards cer­e­mo­ny at the Pres­i­dent’s House due to its con­sis­tent ef­fort. How­ev­er, many mem­bers of the pub­lic are not even aware of the ex­is­tence of sep­a­rate HSRT groups and the on­go­ing ri­val­ry.

As it stands, there are two Hunters Search and Res­cue Team Face­book pages. The team led by Ramb­harat man­ages a page cre­at­ed on Jan­u­ary 9, 2022. It has 74,000 fol­low­ers. The team led by Ayube man­ages a page cre­at­ed on No­vem­ber 21, 2022. It has 55,000 fol­low­ers. Al­though the teams use the same name, they have dif­fer­ent lo­gos.

Val­lance’s Hunters Team

As two ve­hi­cles trans­port­ing Val­lence Ramb­harat and eight mem­bers of his team ex­it­ed the carpark of the Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion on­to the South­ern Main Road, on­look­ers ap­plaud­ed and cheered in pure ad­mi­ra­tion.

“It brings joy to me that fam­i­lies could re­unite with their loved ones and they could al­so get clo­sure. It makes me com­fort­able to know that I could as­sist some­body,” found­ing mem­ber Ram­lash “Hulk” Ram­char­i­tar said.

“It has meant so much to me. Not on­ly to me but to my fam­i­ly as well. Be­cause it brings so much love, joy, and pas­sion that when you go out there to as­sist fam­i­lies in find­ing their loved ones, re­gard­less of the sit­u­a­tion, they get some kind of clo­sure,” Kesraj “Ton­ga” Sook­nanan added.

The men in jeans, hik­ing boots, and bright or­ange and green shirts were head­ing to Fa­bi­en Street, Vista­bel­la, to search for Ken­neth Ali. The 64 year old was re­port­ed miss­ing on Au­gust 18.

There was no doubt who the leader was. Cap­tain Ramb­harat, a well-spo­ken for­mer school teacher, be­gan work­ing the case be­fore ar­riv­ing in Mara­bel­la. He al­ready knew the miss­ing man was not at a hos­pi­tal or in prison.

When the team ar­rived in Vista­bel­la, Ramb­harat spoke with Ali’s rel­a­tives about the miss­ing man’s be­hav­iour­al pat­terns. Ramb­harat said the in­for­ma­tion and a sense of the sur­round­ing area al­lowed him to men­tal­ly for­mu­late a strat­e­gy. Al­though he spoke soft­ly, the group’s mem­bers lis­tened close­ly. Ramb­harat has a calm, as­sertive pres­ence.

With the rel­a­tives, he spoke more as­sertive­ly. There was a hint of all-know­ing­ness, at times, al­beit not ar­ro­gant.

Be­fore head­ing out, the cap­tain called for group prayer. The mem­bers’ broad, cal­loused hands held each oth­er’s.

The first stop was the pee­wah stand along the Tarou­ba Link Road. Ali used to work there. His friend, Archie, told the team that Ali used a near­by trail. Thick, heavy tears filled up the chasmed, dark wrin­kles above Archie’s sharp, swollen cheek­bones.

“Very de­cent. Very hon­est. I could leave Ken­neth with any­thing and come back, and Ken­neth will give me what is mine. I go­ing all over, every­where, look­ing for him, boy,” he said, still cry­ing.

In an ef­fi­cient­ly im­pres­sive man­ner, the group searched near­by rivers and bush­es. But with no sign of Ali, the search perime­ter was ex­pand­ed. On foot, one group walked the drains from the fam­i­ly home to the main riv­er, while the oth­er group made its way around in the oth­er di­rec­tion.

A drone mon­i­tored from above. While tak­ing their tasks se­ri­ous­ly, the men, like broth­ers, poked fun at one an­oth­er. Re­call­ing some of their past search­es, they told sto­ries of mirac­u­lous re­cov­er­ies.

Two of them, sep­a­rate­ly, spoke of Jen­nes­sa Al­leyne, the five year old with autism who was found sit­ting on the bank of the Cara­po Riv­er 12 hours af­ter her dis­ap­pear­ance.

The pic­ture of Ramb­harat hold­ing a drenched Jen­nes­sa alive was one of the group’s most pow­er­ful im­ages. The mem­bers, many re­tirees, tra­versed the com­mu­ni­ty’s ter­rain fear­less­ly—slip­pery, mossy drains, nar­row, mud­dy paths, and damp, waist-high grass. And af­ter more than three hours of search­ing, the group called it a day.

They promised Ali’s rel­a­tives they would con­tin­ue the next day. The rel­a­tives thanked Ramb­harat and the team, of­fer­ing tu­na sand­wich­es, cold drinks, and aloo pies as to­kens of ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

“We thought it would have been once a month, but that quick­ly dis­si­pat­ed af­ter COVID-19, and now we find our­selves out on search­es ap­prox­i­mate­ly four or five times per month.

“In all, we have 32 strong; Two in To­ba­go, 30 in Trinidad ... We have units with­in the team … I think, at the end of the day, it is those who have that al­tru­is­tic view; that vol­un­teerism is a no­ble thing and that when you give back, you get bless­ings in re­turn,” Ramb­harat said.

As he spoke, the oth­er mem­bers of the team stood close­ly to­geth­er be­hind him. Ali is still miss­ing.

The con­flicts

Ramb­harat ad­dressed the con­flicts with Ayube and Gopiesingh, say­ing he ex­pelled them from the group.

“Now, our con­sti­tu­tion is very clear. It says any mem­ber who at­tracts crim­i­nal charges by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) would be asked to step out of the team and clear their name. Such an in­ci­dent hap­pened in No­vem­ber 2022 when a mem­ber had two crim­i­nal charges pre­ferred against him, and the de­ci­sion was tak­en by this team to have him ex­pelled.

“That gen­tle­man, when he came on the team, things were OK for a month or two, and then a tox­ic cul­ture start­ed to seep in­to the team. We looked at it close­ly. We gave him op­por­tu­ni­ties to cor­rect him­self, and he didn’t. So once the charges were pre­ferred, the op­por­tu­ni­ty was used for him to be ex­pelled.

“Sad­ly, a cou­ple of weeks af­ter that in­ci­dent, he went on Face­book and cre­at­ed a sim­i­lar page, and out there he’s been try­ing to mim­ic and copy the team, but we don’t pay at­ten­tion to him. We are no­ble in our cause,” he said.

Two of the three men claim­ing own­er­ship of HSRT, Ayube and Gopiesingh, were charged with crim­i­nal of­fences. Ayube con­firmed that he was charged with us­ing ob­scene lan­guage, while Gopiesingh ad­mit­ted that he was charged with of­fences against a mi­nor.

“From No­vem­ber 2022 or Jan­u­ary 2023, when that mem­ber was ex­pelled, up to now, he has nev­er as­sist­ed a sin­gle fam­i­ly in re­cov­er­ing their loved one’s body. From Feb­ru­ary 2023 to now, we have as­sist­ed 30 fam­i­lies in achiev­ing clo­sure when we re­cov­ered their bod­ies. So it’s re­al­ly a com­par­i­son be­tween chalk and cheese,” Ramb­harat said proud­ly and as­sertive­ly.

Ram­char­i­tar, the head of the HSRT’s cen­tral unit, sup­port­ed his cap­tain.

“In the team, we don’t tol­er­ate fool­ish­ness at all. We are se­ri­ous about pro­tect­ing the team. We have women on the team, and we are se­ri­ous about pro­tect­ing women on the team.

“To know that al­most all of the mem­bers that start from the be­gin­ning are here and for that in­di­vid­ual to go out and say he cre­at­ed the name and this and that, we know that is a lie ... We don’t say it, but we have records. We have a lot of things we could put out there, but we just don’t, be­cause we are about help­ing peo­ple,” Ram­char­i­tar said.

Sham­sudeen’s fight

A burly man with two pony­tails and a thick Guyanese ac­cent, Sham­sudeen Ayube, a con­trac­tor, is one of the most recog­nis­able mem­bers of any of the Hunters Search and Res­cue groups.

Ac­cord­ing to him, he is the right­ful own­er of the sole group. He showed the reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments of Sham Hunters Search and Res­cue as ev­i­dence. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ayube claimed that he, and not Gopiesingh, reg­is­tered ‘Hard Grounds Hunters Search and Res­cue’—the first HSRT-re­lat­ed reg­is­tered en­ti­ty—as a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion on April 16, 2021.

Guardian Me­dia con­firmed that Ayube was list­ed as a di­rec­tor for Hard Grounds Hunters Search and Res­cue.

From the on­set of the search­es, Ayube es­tab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion as a brave, re­lent­less searcher with good sources and in­stincts. He is pas­sion­ate about HSRT to the point of ob­ses­sion.

“What in­spires me? Well, we have a small child. My wife took care of that child from two and a half months old. She is sev­en years old now. At night, when I am ly­ing down on the bed and I see this child ly­ing down on the bed, I re­alise if there is some­thing wrong, who will I turn to? Who will I go to? And that’s what mo­ti­vates me, and that’s why I went out and searched for An­drea Bharatt,” Ayube said.

When Guardian Me­dia ar­rived in Ari­ma to in­ter­view Ayube, his wife re­called oc­ca­sions when they spent days sleep­ing in their car dur­ing a search. On one oc­ca­sion, she said, they slept in their car for sev­en days.

Be­fore the in­ter­view be­gan, Ayube’s hair was sep­a­rat­ed in­to the trade­mark two pony­tails by his wife. His speech was, at times, dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand, but he was pas­sion­ate about his work.

“With­in the group we had, there was no leader, and we moved on, and we tried to put things to­geth­er to fig­ure out how to or­gan­ise be­cause we had so many peo­ple around. At the time, there was a lot of bac­cha­nal; every­body was fight­ing be­cause that one was fight­ing this one. That one fight­ing this one.

“It is not any con­fu­sion to the pub­lic (about who owns HSRT). It is very sim­ple. On one oc­ca­sion, the whole group mashed up. I said I would con­tin­ue to help to look for miss­ing per­sons be­cause on those oc­ca­sions it was me, my wife, and my part­ner, Bisoon­dath Seer­am, and we con­tin­ued run­ning the East-West cor­ri­dor, look­ing for peo­ple. And we said we would con­tin­ue to look for miss­ing per­sons,” he said, adding that he was the per­son who brought the group back to­geth­er. Ac­cord­ing to Ayube, the group then split per­ma­nent­ly be­cause he be­came in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned about so­cial me­dia posts.

Ayube said HSRT be­gan claim­ing res­cues the group did not make. He list­ed the Jen­nes­sa Al­leyne res­cue as an ex­am­ple. Guardian Me­dia was shown a pic­ture with Jen­nes­sa’s un­cle and cousin, two fish­er­men, car­ry­ing a drenched Jen­nes­sa over their shoul­ders out of the riv­er. We were al­so shown a video, filmed by one of the two men, show­ing them spot­ting Jen­nes­sa in the riv­er for the first time.

“Don’t tell me it’s me alone see­ing that alyuh, cause we eh go­ing mad. I hear with my un­cle,” one of the men said in the video, re­fer­ring to spot­ting Jen­nes­sa in the wa­ter.

In an­oth­er video show­ing the two fish­er­men car­ry­ing the lit­tle girl from the riv­er, there was a mem­ber of the HSRT team be­hind. The in­di­vid­ual, in the video, said an­oth­er mem­ber was near­by. Ramb­harat was quot­ed in a ma­jor news­pa­per say­ing that he spot­ted the lit­tle girl sit­ting on the riv­er bank.

“We saw her drenched. She was close to the sea. I couldn’t be­lieve it. I grabbed her and passed by the po­lice sta­tion and then to her moth­er,” Ramb­harat was quot­ed as say­ing.

When Guardian Me­dia put the ques­tion and footage to Ramb­harat last week, he la­belled Ayube’s state­ments as lies. He said Ayube’s ex­pul­sion from his What­sApp group was a re­sult of re­peat­ed mis­con­duct and a crim­i­nal charge for ob­scene lan­guage.

Ramb­harat al­so de­nied sug­ges­tions that he or any oth­er mem­ber of the group ever claimed res­cues or re­cov­er­ies that they were not re­spon­si­ble for. He said his group has res­cued and re­cov­ered more peo­ple than any oth­er en­ti­ty claim­ing to be the Hunters Search and Res­cue group.

Ayube al­so claimed that Ramb­harat has al­so been ‘mis­lead­ing the na­tion’ by claim­ing own­er­ship of HSRT.

“We nev­er take cred­it for no­body’s work. In Mer­maid Pool, we res­cued the peo­ple with the 14 hik­ers who were strand­ed, and one was bit­ten by the mat­apee. We res­cued these peo­ple and brought them out, and he nev­er was there. He came af­ter they were res­cued and told the en­tire na­tion that he found them.

“There was a case in Biche that a fel­la drowned. Me and my part­ner Mamoo went up ear­ly, and we were about to do a search. We were in­struct­ed not to go and do no search un­til the team as­sem­bled. The team nev­er came to­geth­er. We guide the fam­i­ly and the vil­lagers on how to search. They search and find the in­di­vid­u­als based on how we teach them our knowl­edge. Next thing we see it on so­cial me­dia. We see them pub­lish­ing that they find, but they nev­er find any­body. I said take it down be­cause you can­not lie to the na­tion. You nev­er find no­body,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Ayube, he plans to take le­gal ac­tion against Ramb­harat’s claim of own­er­ship of HSRT.

“Yeah, it have con­se­quences down the road. As I said, we are wait­ing for the right time. We are nev­er wor­ried. We are nev­er late. But the right time will come, and we are prepar­ing to do cer­tain things legal­ly, not il­le­gal­ly. It’s in process, and as I said, we are talk­ing to a lot of lawyers,” Ayube stat­ed.

‘Do­ing some­thing good for the na­tion’

Bis­son­dath Seer­am, one of the 60 mem­bers of Ayube’s group, de­scribed the con­trac­tor as hon­est and ded­i­cat­ed. He sup­port­ed his friend’s sen­ti­ment.

“They like to pro­mote them­selves by tak­ing cred­it that is not due to them, un­like Sham. If some­one dis­cov­ers some­thing, he would high­light the per­son and re­spond that he would have made arrange­ments. They al­ways men­tioned that Sham would have been a per­son who would have been on all the search­es, and they gave him cred­it for that when I was with that group. He nev­er fal­tered or dropped out, and up to to­day, he con­tin­ues with that same at­ti­tude.

“When I brought that lit­tle boy Umar out of the for­est in Grande, I had this feel­ing that that was my grand­child be­cause I have a grand­daugh­ter that is about his age. So that feel­ing gives you a lit­tle pride in your­self, know­ing that you are do­ing some­thing good for the na­tion,” he said.

Gopiesingh’s le­gal ac­tion

The first le­gal mat­ter con­cern­ing the use of HSRT arose in April 2022. Gopiesingh, leader of the Hard Grounds Hunters Search and Res­cue Team, is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the group head­ed by Ramb­harat.

Gopiesingh’s at­tor­ney, Ger­ald Ramdeen, gave Ramb­harat 28 days to stop us­ing the name and en­gag­ing in ac­tiv­i­ties re­lat­ed to its pur­pose.

Ac­cord­ing to the le­gal let­ter, Ramb­harat was ex­pelled for un­der­min­ing be­hav­iour. Ramb­harat, un­daunt­ed, con­tin­ued to use HSRT. Ac­cord­ing to Gopiesingh, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia, his le­gal chal­lenge against Ramb­harat is on hold.

Gopiesingh is fo­cused on deal­ing with a crim­i­nal charge. “I ac­tu­al­ly ease it up be­cause I try to clear my name with this al­le­ga­tion, and then I will con­tin­ue with the le­gal doc­u­ments,” he said.

Asked about the be­gin­nings of HSRT, Gopiesingh said he reg­is­tered Ayube, and not Ramb­harat, as a di­rec­tor in the orig­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion on April 16, 2021. Gopiesingh claimed that two boats giv­en to him last year un­der Hunters Search and Res­cue were col­lect­ed by an­oth­er group “un­der false pre­tences.”

He added, “I pulled the Re­pub­lic Bank ac­counts. I pulled Sco­tia­bank ac­counts, but the on­ly bank I didn’t get to pull is First Cit­i­zens.”

Gopiesingh said his HSRT group, with 15 mem­bers, is op­er­a­tional but work­ing qui­et­ly. He said it has a con­tract with the TTPS to as­sist with in­for­ma­tion gath­er­ing in miss­ing per­sons cas­es. 

Who is the right­ful own­er?

Giv­en that the ac­counts of the three men dif­fer, it is im­pos­si­ble to prove who ver­bal­ly con­cep­tu­alised the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry of the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment, the first re­lat­ed or­gan­i­sa­tion reg­is­tered by any of the three dis­put­ing founders is “Hard Grounds Hunters Search and Res­cue.” It was reg­is­tered by Gopiesingh as a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion on April 16, 2021.

A sec­ond re­lat­ed or­gan­i­sa­tion, “Hunters Emer­gency Re­sponse Team,” was reg­is­tered by Ramb­harat as a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion on Oc­to­ber 25, 2022.

A third re­lat­ed or­gan­i­sa­tion, “Sham Hunters Search and Res­cue Team,” was formed by Sham­sudeen Ayube on Sep­tem­ber 29, 2023.

No or­gan­i­sa­tion is reg­is­tered specif­i­cal­ly as Hunters Search and Res­cue, but an un­named par­ty sought un­suc­cess­ful­ly to re­serve the com­pa­ny name in the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry in ear­ly 2023.