The fam­i­ly of one of the three fish­er­men who is still miss­ing at sea no longer know what to be­lieve or where to turn for help.

From be­ing told he was kid­napped to his de­com­posed body washed ashore in Venezuela, the rel­a­tives of Zaid “John­ny” Al­lahin said the tor­ture is un­bear­able.

And, the si­lence of the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties is not help­ing, they claimed.

“We just want to make an­oth­er ap­peal to any­one, to our au­thor­i­ties, any body, please let us know what is go­ing on. If you have any in­for­ma­tion about his where­abouts let us know please,” plead­ed his sis­ter April Khan.

Al­lahin, Steve “Short­man” See­lochan, Vi­jayanand “Pro­mo” Too­phanie and Arnold “Mon­key” Ramkhelawan are be­lieved to have been on a ves­sel head­ing to Venezuela from Moru­ga which cap­sized about two weeks ago.

Ramkhelawan told his fam­i­ly that he was res­cued and tak­en to Guyana, but he could not say any­thing about the oth­er fish­er­men.

Al­lahin’s rel­a­tives said he did not tell them where he was go­ing or that he was on a boat.

Days af­ter the T&T Coast Guard sent out a re­lease about a ves­sel trans­port­ing 25 peo­ple sink­ing in Venezuela wa­ters, Khan said some one con­tact­ed them claim­ing that her broth­er was kid­napped.

They said the kid­nap­pers want­ed $70,000, then the sum was re­duced to $25,000. But, the per­son nev­er con­tact­ed them again.

Then the fam­i­ly was told that Al­lahin was in quar­an­tine in Venezuela and he would be re­leased af­ter 14 days.

This was fol­lowed with claims that his de­com­pos­ing body washed ashore in Venezuela and the au­thor­i­ties buried him. The fam­i­ly was told that they would have to come to Venezuela with the po­lice to ex­hume his body.

“Is re­al stress. We just don’t know what to do again,” Khan lament­ed.

She said they have not re­ceived any new in­for­ma­tion from the T&T Coast Guard of the po­lice.

In a re­lease two Sun­days ago, the Coast Guard re­port­ed that it was as­sist­ing in a search and res­cue op­er­a­tion in­volv­ing a ves­sel trans­port­ing 25 peo­ple from T&T to the Delta Re­gion of Venezuela.

The re­lease stat­ed that ini­tial search­es by peo­ple in Venezuela led to the dis­cov­ery of four bod­ies and one sur­vivor.

How­ev­er, 20 peo­ple re­mained un­ac­count­ed for at that time. Guardian reached out to the Coast Guard in­quir­ing whether there were any new de­vel­op­ments, but there was no re­sponse up to press time.

— Sascha Wil­son