A 28-year-old man has been grant­ed $375,000 bail in con­nec­tion with the kid­nap­ping of Trinidad-born Unit­ed King­dom cit­i­zen Za­heer Esat.

Jonathan Nan­coo was grant­ed bail last Fri­day by Port-of-Spain High Court Mas­ter Deli­cia Bethelmy who or­dered that he sur­ren­der his pass­port, have no con­tact with the vic­tim or wit­ness­es and re­port to the po­lice sta­tion.

Po­lice al­leged that on April 4 at War­ren Road, Cunu­pia, to­geth­er with oth­er per­sons un­known, the ac­cused did law­ful­ly seize and take away Esat with­out his con­sent or with­out law­ful ex­cuse, for ran­som.

The charge fur­ther al­leged that Esat was held and pre­vent­ed from re­turn­ing to his nor­mal place of abode. 

Esat, 46, re­port­ed­ly owns a pri­vate school for trou­bled chil­dren in the UK and came to Trinidad to vis­it his par­ents. 

Esat, his fa­ther and broth­er-in-law were re­turn­ing home in a car from the Be­ju­cal Mosque around 1.50 pm when a ve­hi­cle blocked their path, and a gun­man grabbed Esat from the back seat. 

Esat was found walk­ing near the Ca­roni Cre­ma­tion site around 8.15 pm on April 6.   Nan­coo was sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed in a sting op­er­a­tion, po­lice said. 

He was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Prakash Ra­mad­har and Vis­han Gir­war who re­quest­ed bail with sure­ty.  They sub­mit­ted that Nan­coo, a route plan­ner with a bot­tled wa­ter com­pa­ny, cares for his moth­er and is the sole bread­win­ner of his fam­i­ly.

They said he had no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions or mat­ters be­fore the court and had re­ceived an out­pour­ing of sup­port from his col­leagues, friends and fam­i­ly.

The at­tor­neys ar­gued the ac­cused was not a flight risk and was will­ing to sur­ren­der his pass­port and re­port to the Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion. 

The po­lice pros­e­cu­tor, Con­sta­ble Subero, did not ob­ject to bail. He in­di­cat­ed that he was re­ly­ing on six wit­ness­es, in­ter­view notes and a med­ical re­port.  

The Mas­ter or­dered Nan­coo to re­port to the po­lice sta­tion every Fri­day be­tween the hours of 6 am to 6 pm and that he con­tin­ue to re­side at his cur­rent ad­dress for the du­ra­tion of this mat­ter. 

The mat­ter was ad­journed for a Suf­fi­cien­cy Hear­ing on Oc­to­ber 1.