DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Two po­lice of­fi­cers have been re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody af­ter ap­pear­ing in court in con­nec­tion with the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of used car deal­er Sachel “Pablo” Kunge­be­har­ry. 

Act­ing Cpl Ashraf Mo­hammed, 45, of Chin Chin Road, Cunu­pia, and PC Ja­son Dan Michael, 34, of Char­lieville, stood be­fore High Court Mas­ter Mar­garet Sookraj-Goswa­mi, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

The of­fi­cers, who were last as­signed to the Ca­roni Po­lice Sta­tion, were charged for Kunge­be­har­ry’s mur­der with an un­known per­son and for mis­be­hav­ing in pub­lic of­fice by kid­nap­ping him for ran­som. 

They made their vir­tu­al court ap­pear­ance from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion. The hear­ing was wit­nessed by Mo­hammed’s sis­ter and moth­er and Michael’s moth­er, who were at the of­fices of their at­tor­neys Shi­va Boodoo and Rosh­ni Balka­ran. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Mas­ter Sookraj-Goswa­mi ad­vised the of­fi­cers that they could not re­ly on al­i­bis in their even­tu­al tri­al un­less they gave an in­di­ca­tion and pro­vid­ed the names of wit­ness­es to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) with­in 21 days or dur­ing their suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing be­fore her. 

Act­ing Sgt Lawrence Joe­field, who charged the duo, in­di­cat­ed that there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 wit­ness­es in the case. 

Balka­ran ques­tioned why a cell phone owned by Mo­hammed’s wife and Michael’s car were seized dur­ing search­es at their homes. 

Joe­field said that the phone and car were be­ing in­spect­ed for pos­si­ble ev­i­dence and would be re­turned if noth­ing of ev­i­den­tial val­ue was found. 

Mas­ter Sookraj-Goswa­mi set dead­lines for the fil­ing of doc­u­ments in the case be­fore set­ting a sta­tus hear­ing for Oc­to­ber 29, next year. She is sched­uled to con­duct a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing for the duo on No­vem­ber 7, next year. 

Bail was not con­sid­ered dur­ing the hear­ing as the duo would have to ap­ply to a judge at a lat­er date to con­sid­er such. 

Kunge­be­har­ry, 32, from Pierre Road, Fe­lic­i­ty, was ab­duct­ed on Sep­tem­ber 25. 

He was re­port­ed­ly dri­ving along Jern­ing­ham Rail­way Road, En­deav­our, Ch­agua­nas, when his ve­hi­cle was stopped by a marked po­lice car. 

Two men dressed in po­lice tac­ti­cal uni­forms and a third uniden­ti­fied man claimed that they had a war­rant for his ar­rest be­fore re­mov­ing him from the ve­hi­cle, plac­ing him in theirs and dri­ving away. 

The pas­sen­gers in Kunge­be­har­ry’s car were un­harmed. 

Kunge­be­har­ry’s rel­a­tives re­ceived a ran­som re­quest and $500,000 was even­tu­al­ly de­liv­ered to a lo­ca­tion in Las Lo­mas iden­ti­fied by his al­leged ab­duc­tors. 

How­ev­er, he was not re­leased as promised. 

His body was even­tu­al­ly found in a shal­low grave at Pokhor Road in Long­denville on Oc­to­ber 3. 

He was iden­ti­fied by his fin­ger­prints. An au­top­sy re­vealed he died of chop wounds to his neck and head and a stab wound to his up­per back.