A Ch­agua­nas man has be­come the first per­son to be charged with ex­tor­tion by the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit for 22 of­fences stem­ming from a rack­et that spanned eight months be­tween March and Oc­to­ber.

Varindranath Maraj, 37, of Wood­ford Gar­dens, Ch­agua­nas, was ar­rest­ed and charged with­in one week fol­low­ing ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tions by of­fi­cers of the new­ly formed unit. He was grant­ed $95,000 bail when he ap­peared in court yes­ter­day.

Maraj re­port­ed­ly de­mand­ed $153,000 from the vic­tim and re­ceived $70,000 as pay­ment. The list of charges in­clud­ed nine counts of de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace, which amount­ed to $153,000; one count of kid­nap­ping; one count of com­mon as­sault; one count of pos­ses­sion of a firearm; one count of pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion; one count of pos­ses­sion of a firearm to en­dan­ger life; one count of pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion to en­dan­ger life; and sev­en counts of rob­bery, amount­ing to $73,000.

Maraj was not called up­on to plead when he ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Shabi­ki Caz­abon. He was grant­ed a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing for Ju­ly 2025.

The male vic­tim re­port­ed to po­lice that dur­ing the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 2024 to Oc­to­ber 2024, a man known to him de­mand­ed sev­er­al sums of mon­ey from him at dif­fer­ent times. He al­leged that on one oc­ca­sion the sus­pect kid­napped him at gun­point and took him to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion against his will.

Prais­ing the com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion of the of­fi­cers who were hand-picked to be part of the lat­est unit to be formed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP), Ad­min­is­tra­tion Richard Smith urged the pub­lic to con­tin­ue mak­ing re­ports.

He said the re­sponse by of­fi­cers was ev­i­dence that they were treat­ing all re­ports se­ri­ous­ly and in­ves­ti­gat­ing all in­for­ma­tion for­ward­ed to them.

Up­on re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion in this in­stance, ACP Smith launched an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion, su­per­vised by Sgt Bac­chus and Cpl Phillip, who are both as­signed to the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit.

Maraj, who was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent on Oc­to­ber 29, was charged with the of­fences by Cpl Baksh, al­so of the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit, on No­vem­ber 3.

Even as the unit cel­e­brat­ed its suc­cess, Smith said, “Al­though it’s a good achieve­ment, we still have a long way to go.” The pub­lic is re­mind­ed that they can con­tact the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit at 797-3150.

The unit cur­rent­ly boasts 11 mem­bers of staff, in­clud­ing le­gal of­fi­cers, an­a­lysts, and op­er­a­tives, who have all been spe­cial­ly vet­ted and hand-picked from among the ranks of the TTPS.

The TTPS re­ceived a to­tal of 16 re­ports of de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace in 2022, of which sev­en were solved and peo­ple ar­rest­ed. The num­ber of re­ports bal­looned to 162 in 2023, with a to­tal of 19 re­ports re­ceived up to Sep­tem­ber for this year thus far.

Smith pre­vi­ous­ly said the unit’s per­son­nel had un­der­gone a rig­or­ous se­lec­tion process where each of­fi­cer’s in­tegri­ty and abil­i­ty to main­tain con­fi­den­tial­i­ty were close­ly and care­ful­ly ex­am­ined, as “it’s a sen­si­tive type of of­fence.”

This win for the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit fol­lows on the heels of calls for more in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to re­ports of ex­tor­tion tar­get­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

While one se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert and a crim­i­nol­o­gist hint­ed that some busi­ness own­ers were to blame for the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cas­es as some peo­ple had will­ing­ly got­ten in­volved with crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es, which had led to an in­crease in ex­tor­tion mat­ters, busi­ness own­ers were urged to steer clear of such en­tan­gle­ments. Mean­while, the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce has com­mend­ed the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit for ar­rest­ing and charg­ing an in­di­vid­ual for ex­tor­tion.

Cham­ber pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia, “This case, in­volv­ing se­vere charges of ex­tor­tion, rob­bery, and oth­er crimes, high­lights the need for con­tin­ued vig­i­lance and ro­bust en­force­ment to pro­tect both in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es in our com­mu­ni­ty. Our Cham­ber re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing close­ly with law en­force­ment to en­sure that Ch­agua­nas is a safe place to live, work, and do busi­ness.

“We sup­port the es­tab­lish­ment of spe­cialised units like the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit, which pro­vide tar­get­ed re­sources and ex­per­tise to ad­dress crimes that desta­bilise the trust and safe­ty with­in our busi­ness and res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties. We en­cour­age all res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers in Ch­agua­nas to re­port any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties to the au­thor­i­ties and co­op­er­ate ful­ly with in­ves­ti­ga­tions to help cre­ate a safer and more pros­per­ous en­vi­ron­ment for every­one.”

–re­port­ing by Shas­tri Boodan