An­na-Lisa Paul

Quick work by po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ing a break-in at Ra­dio Jaagri­ti (102.7fm) yes­ter­day morn­ing re­sult­ed in two men be­ing de­tained hours af­ter the in­ci­dent.The sus­pects, aged 26 and 17, from Beetham Gar­dens, Port-of-Spain, were ar­rest­ed around 11.30 am as they drove along Main Street, Beetham Gar­dens.

The sus­pects, who are known to po­lice, were ar­rest­ed af­ter they were found dri­ving a Maz­da car loaded with com­put­ers, am­pli­fiers and oth­er equip­ment tak­en from the sta­tion. The equip­ment was iden­ti­fied by tech­ni­cians, who were con­tact­ed and brought to the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, Port-of-Spain.Se­nior po­lice­men said Cpl Primus and PC Mitchell, of the In­ter Agency Task Force, were on mo­bile pa­trol along Main Street, when they saw the men dri­ving off.

Mean­while, the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha's sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat­naryan (Sat) Ma­haraj, who is al­so the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the sta­tion, said the break-in was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view, Ma­haraj added: "Well all we know so far is we have been sus­pect­ing that there is in­ter­fer­ence in our pro­grammes, es­pe­cial­ly our Tues­day and Fri­day, where we have a po­lit­i­cal pro­gramme and we are sup­port­ive of some of the things the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing.

"We no­tice there has been in­ter­fer­ence in the re­cep­tion and so on."We got a call that they have dam­aged the equip­ment. We have no valu­ables there as such so that it was just an at­tempt to si­lence the sta­tion."Ma­haraj said there were 39 ra­dio sta­tions in the coun­try and ques­tioned why Ra­dio Jaagri­ti was cho­sen. He de­scribed the van­dal­ism as un­for­tu­nate and added: "We will see how it plays off from here."

Ra­dio Ja­grati van­dalised

He said T&T was a free coun­try and said each sta­tion or per­son should be free to have po­lit­i­cal al­liances.

"We sup­port the Gov­ern­ment and we find it in­tol­er­a­ble that any­one or any group could want to si­lence a ra­dio sta­tion," he added. Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, three men broke in­to the sta­tion at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3 am yes­ter­day and equip­ment, val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $300,000, was van­dalised. He said the in­trud­ers got in by break­ing the lock of the side door. Two se­cu­ri­ty guards, he said, were held up at gun­point, tied up and their faces cov­ered. They were not in­jured.

The ra­dio sta­tion was set up by the Hin­du or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha. Ma­haraj said Jaagri­ti, which has been on the air for five years, was born out of pol­i­tics, as for ten years the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion de­nied it a li­cence to go on air but the Privy Coun­cil in­ter­vened, cit­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion. He said the sta­tion would turn the dis­as­ter in­to a suc­cess.

"I com­ing back stronger," Ma­haraj said.There were no sur­veil­lance cam­eras at the time of the in­ci­dent but Ma­haraj has hired a se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny to set up elec­tron­ic cam­eras around the prop­er­ty."We nev­er spent mon­ey on se­cu­ri­ty, per se, on­ly on guards but now we have to go be­yond that."

A sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the sta­tion said the en­try point used by the in­trud­ers was al­so be­ing re­in­forced."They fixed the lock and now they go­ing to put bur­glar proof over the door," said Kishore Boodram.Aaron Hen­ry, CEO of SWAT Es­tate Po­lice, said eight cam­eras would be in­stalled as a re­sult of the break-in.