A hunters’ search and res­cue team which was called in­to ac­tion to as­sist in find­ing then-miss­ing per­son An­drea Bharatt, is one year lat­er con­tin­u­ing their work in search­ing for miss­ing peo­ple.

The group will be cel­e­brat­ing its first an­niver­sary to­day.

One year ago, hunters gath­ered at 7 am at the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, fol­low­ing a re­quest by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to as­sist in the search for Bharatt.

The hunters, quick­ly as­signed Val­lence Ramb­harat as their cap­tain, to lead the team.

Fol­low­ing this search, the hunters de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue on as Hunters Search and Res­cue Team and just mere days af­ter, the Team was called in­to ac­tion, to work with law en­force­ment, in an Op­er­a­tion dubbed “Aripo Sweep,” to thor­ough­ly search the Heights of Aripo.

Dur­ing the past year, the team con­duct­ed 40 mis­sions—38 in Trinidad and two in To­ba­go.

Us­ing the mot­to, “Clo­sure Mat­ters” the team said their mis­sion re­mains to re­spond quick­ly to fam­i­lies whose loved ones go miss­ing.

The team cur­rent­ly com­pris­es 25 mem­bers, 22 in Trinidad and three in To­ba­go. There are 21 males and four fe­males and they say train­ing and plan­ning are at the fore­front of their ac­tiv­i­ties.

The team re­mains large­ly self-fund­ed and has vowed to con­tin­ue to pro­vide ser­vices free of charge to the cit­i­zens of T&T.

­—Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant