Police charge 3 in false imprisonment of Sabita Basdeo

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Al­most two months af­ter a so­cial me­dia video prompt­ed the res­cue and a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­le­ga­tion that Sabi­ta Bas­deo was false­ly im­pris­oned and suf­fered abuse dur­ing that time, three peo­ple have been charged with a se­ries of of­fences in re­la­tion to the case.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said busi­ness­woman Fa­ree­da Bal­go­b­in, 42, her son Joshua Ben­ny, 18, and Ro­hit Sita­hal are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore the Siparia Mag­is­trates’ Court to­day on a to­tal of 19 charges, in­clud­ing false im­pris­on­ment, kid­nap­ping, throw­ing a nox­ious sub­stance and as­sault.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, Bal­go­b­in was charged with ten of­fences, in­clud­ing false im­pris­on­ment, throw­ing a nox­ious sub­stance, two counts of in­flict­ing griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, as­sault oc­ca­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm, chok­ing, kid­nap­ping and three ad­di­tion­al re­lat­ed charges.

Ben­ny was charged with five of­fences, in­clud­ing throw­ing a nox­ious sub­stance, two counts of in­flict­ing griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, kid­nap­ping and one ad­di­tion­al re­lat­ed charge.

Sita­hal was charged with four of­fences, in­clud­ing throw­ing a nox­ious sub­stance, two counts of in­flict­ing griev­ous bod­i­ly harm and one ad­di­tion­al re­lat­ed charge.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, the charges stemmed from a re­port that the vic­tim was held against her will and sub­ject­ed to pro­longed abuse dur­ing the pe­ri­od June 2019 to April 11.

Bas­deo, 42, a moth­er of two, had re­port­ed­ly told po­lice that she was forced to per­form do­mes­tic du­ties, abused and pre­vent­ed from leav­ing the res­i­dence.

Af­ter see­ing Bas­deo in a video on so­cial me­dia, mem­bers of the pub­lic in­ter­vened and prompt­ed po­lice in­ter­ven­tion.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro mo­bilised a team of of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion and the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force on April 11 to lo­cate Bas­deo. Search­es were car­ried out at sev­er­al lo­ca­tions, but she was not found at the time.

Hours lat­er, Bal­go­b­in and her son turned up at the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion with Bas­deo. As of­fi­cers ap­proached, Bas­deo broke free and sought help. She has since been re­unit­ed with her hus­band, two sons and oth­er rel­a­tives.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, PC Lee Lum was as­signed to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter un­der the su­per­vi­sion and guid­ance of Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Si­mon, W/Supt Bridge­lal, ASP Chul­han, In­sp Ram­di­al, In­sp Nand­lal, and In­sp Ma­haraj, with le­gal ad­vice pro­vid­ed by ASP Phillip. On June 3, in­struc­tions were is­sued by Supt Bridge­lal, with as­sis­tance from Sgt Bas­sarath, to lay charges against the ac­cused.

The moth­er and son were ini­tial­ly held un­der Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders in mid-April as in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ter were con­duct­ed.

Days lat­er, their Pe­nal home was par­tial­ly dam­aged by a fire in what was ini­tial­ly be­lieved to be an ar­son at­tack.