Jensen LaVende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Val­sayn wife and moth­er Jankie Karim re­mained in the hands of her kid­nap­pers last night, as po­lice con­tin­ued to in­ves­ti­gate her ab­duc­tion.

Karim, 44, of An­poo Street, Spring Vil­lage, was forcibly tak­en around 9.50 pm on Sun­day. She was dragged from her fam­i­ly’s white Toy­ota Hilux by three masked gun­men, who in­ter­cept­ed the ve­hi­cle with a blue car just min­utes from her home along Bassie Street.

The as­sailants made off with Karim, the pick­up, her hus­band’s mo­bile phone, and $500. The ve­hi­cle was re­cov­ered Mon­day around 7 am in Arou­ca.

As of Mon­day evening, po­lice con­firmed that no ran­som de­mand had been made. Au­thor­i­ties are typ­i­cal­ly re­served about such mat­ters, cau­tion­ing that pub­li­cis­ing ran­som re­quests could in­spire copy­cat crimes.

This lat­est kid­nap­ping marks the third ab­duc­tion in one week—two of which end­ed trag­i­cal­ly.

On Ju­ly 10, the body of Scott Timala Ram­baran was dis­cov­ered, two days af­ter he was re­port­ed miss­ing. Ker­ry Von Adams was found dead on Ju­ly 7, one day af­ter a $15,000 ran­som was paid for his re­lease.

While rel­a­tives of Karim de­clined to speak to re­porters, cit­ing po­lice ad­vice, law en­force­ment sources con­firmed in­ves­ti­ga­tions are ac­tive. Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin stat­ed that, as of 7 pm on Mon­day, no ran­som de­mand had sur­faced. She de­clined fur­ther com­ment.

The case echoes last year’s con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the kid­nap­ping of dou­bles ven­dor An­isha Ho­sein. Then, ACP Wayne Mys­tar claimed a ran­som was de­mand­ed—a state­ment her hus­band pub­licly de­nied.

Mar­tin lat­er dis­tanced the po­lice ser­vice from Mys­tar’s com­ment, say­ing it was un­der in­ter­nal re­view. Mys­tar did not ad­dress the is­sue fur­ther.

Ac­cord­ing to TTPS da­ta, there were six re­port­ed cas­es of kid­nap­ping for ran­som in 2023, up from three the pre­vi­ous year. Over­all kid­nap­pings rose to 124 in 2023 from 109 in 2022. No up­dat­ed sta­tis­tics for 2024 are cur­rent­ly avail­able.

Records from the TTPS web­site span from 2013 to 2024—two years af­ter the dis­band­ment of the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SAUTT), which op­er­at­ed from 2003 and had been cred­it­ed with curb­ing kid­nap­pings. SAUTT was even­tu­al­ly dis­solved af­ter be­ing de­clared il­le­gal­ly con­sti­tut­ed.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od cov­ered on the web­site, kid­nap­ping-for-ran­som cas­es ranged from one to six an­nu­al­ly, ex­cept for 2018, which saw a spike to 20. To­tal an­nu­al kid­nap­ping fig­ures con­sis­tent­ly ex­ceed­ed 50, with the low­est record­ed in 2020 (65) and the high­est in 2023 (124).