PDOs issued for Penal duo held in Sabita’s investigation

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Days af­ter Pe­nal busi­ness­woman Fa­ree­da Al­ladin Bal­go­b­in and a close male rel­a­tive were ar­rest­ed by po­lice, Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) have been is­sued for both of them.

The or­ders, which were dat­ed April 20 and signed by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, were of­fi­cial­ly gazetted on Tues­day. They were among 16 of the lat­est gazetted PDOs.

They iden­ti­fied Bal­go­b­in and the male rel­a­tive as mem­bers of a gang (in­for­mal crim­i­nal group - ICG) op­er­at­ing in the Pe­nal dis­trict.

“The ICG is in­volved in kid­nap­ping, false im­pris­on­ment, forced labour, griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault, se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy and at­tempt­ed mur­der,” the PDOs stat­ed.

“The de­tainee and oth­ers in­tend to im­mi­nent­ly con­tin­ue these acts and the in­tim­i­da­tion of wit­ness­es whom they have threat­ened to mur­der.”

Bal­go­b­in’s PDO claimed, “Her de­ten­tion is nec­es­sary to dis­rupt her abil­i­ty to fa­cil­i­tate vi­o­lent gang ac­tiv­i­ties and pre­vent es­ca­la­tion of se­ri­ous crim­i­nal con­duct dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.”

The two were iden­ti­fied as per­sons who were “prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty.”

Bal­go­b­in and her rel­a­tive were ar­rest­ed on April 12. They have been ac­cused of hold­ing Sabi­ta Bas­deo, a moth­er of two, against her will for months, beat­ing and threat­en­ing to kill her when­ev­er she tried to leave to see her fam­i­ly.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors have de­scribed the case as one of false im­pris­on­ment and mod­ern-day slav­ery.

Bas­deo re­port­ed­ly told of­fi­cers she was held pris­on­er be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2025 and April 2026.

Bas­deo said she was forced to per­form a range of do­mes­tic du­ties whilst en­dur­ing phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse, and al­so pre­vent­ed from leav­ing.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro was re­port­ed­ly in­stru­men­tal in the res­cue of Bas­deo af­ter he led a team of of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion and the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, to lo­cate her.

One day af­ter the two were tak­en in­to cus­tody, a fire broke out at Bal­go­b­in’s Pe­nal home, par­tial­ly dam­ag­ing the es­ti­mat­ed $1.98 mil­lion prop­er­ty.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors sus­pect the blaze be­gan af­ter a molo­tov cock­tail was thrown through a win­dow of the house at De­osaran Trace, San Fran­cique.