When Ko­mal Ma­haraj, a 40-year-old for­mer school teacher and a mar­ried fa­ther of two, went miss­ing on Ju­ly 19, it gen­er­at­ed wide­spread con­cern. On so­cial me­dia, his dis­ap­pear­ance post was shared thou­sands of times—some peo­ple blamed the coun­try’s crime rate, and oth­ers prayed for his safe re­turn.

When news broke that he had been found 14 days lat­er, on Au­gust 2, there was a col­lec­tive sigh of re­lief. But his sto­ry—be­ing snatched in Price Plaza, tak­en to Venezuela and then re­turned home again af­ter a ran­som was paid—was the cause of scep­ti­cism and scruti­ny.

Some peo­ple be­lieved it was a hoax; some said he was a cryp­tocur­ren­cy bro­ker and a deal went sour, and more spec­u­lat­ed that an­oth­er woman was in­volved.

It forced the Ma­haraj fam­i­ly to is­sue a state­ment on Face­book.

“While the de­tails of the en­tire or­deal can­not be made pub­lic at this time, due to the sen­si­tive na­ture of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we can con­firm that Ko­mal was held cap­tive in Venezuela. We are grate­ful for the prayers and sup­port that brought Ko­mal back safe­ly,” the state­ment said.

Ko­mal’s case re­mains an ac­tive one by the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit.

“In­for­ma­tion in­to the de­tails of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is not ready to be re­leased to the gen­er­al pub­lic for both le­gal and strate­gic rea­sons. But rest as­sured that as the mat­ter reach­es its con­clu­sion, the in­for­ma­tion will be ap­pro­pri­ate­ly dis­trib­uted,” the TTPS’ Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit said in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day.

In this ex­clu­sive Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we piece to­geth­er what took place in the 14 days be­tween Ju­ly 19 and Au­gust 2 and how Ma­haraj man­aged to re­turn home.

Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Ko­mal Ma­haraj, clad in jeans, a red T-shirt, a grey long-sleeved hood­ie, and black and white sneak­ers, left his Fe­lic­i­ty home on Fri­day, Ju­ly 19, at 11.30 am.

He had just dropped off a cur­ry-Q lunch for his wife, Josann Ma­haraj, and head­ed to near­by Price Plaza in his blue Hyundai Ion­iq to use the Sco­tia­bank ATM.

Ac­cord­ing to se­cu­ri­ty footage from the bank, Ko­mal used the ATM at 12.30 pm. He re­port­ed­ly told Josann, via a phone call, that he was go­ing to meet some­one and should be home by 2 pm.

He did not re­turn home that evening. Calls were unan­swered. His car was found un­tam­pered in the mall carpark hours lat­er.

Ko­mal was ini­tial­ly clas­si­fied as a miss­ing per­son. In the two days that fol­lowed—Ju­ly 20 and 21—so­cial me­dia posts by the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team (HSRT) were shared thou­sands of times. In ad­di­tion, the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit (AKU) stepped in.

Days lat­er, Ko­mal was able to com­mu­ni­cate with Josann through What­sApp. If Ko­mal spec­u­lat­ed on why he was tak­en, he didn’t share it with his fam­i­ly. He sent a voice note, which the AKU has in its pos­ses­sion, say­ing he was kid­napped, he was in Venezuela, and a ran­som was de­mand­ed.

In ad­di­tion, he al­so com­mu­ni­cat­ed with Sham­sudeen Ayube, a com­man­der with the Hunters group, as he had mes­saged through What­sApp. He said that Ko­mal sent a lo­ca­tion pin from Venezuela. The pin lo­ca­tion on­ly had the phrase Tron­cal15, which showed, when Guardian Me­dia searched it, that it was in Venezuela. (See map)

Devin­dra Ma­haraj, Ko­mal’s cousin, al­so con­firmed that Ko­mal shared the pin with Ayube as well as his wife. Ma­haraj was nom­i­nat­ed for the role of spokesper­son for the fam­i­ly by Josann. He was de­fen­sive of Ko­mal, crit­i­cal of Ayube, in­dif­fer­ent to the scep­ti­cism, and short on de­tails.

“Let me first and fore­most con­firm that it was a kid­nap­ping. I can con­firm with you that a ran­som was paid. There are things about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion that are still go­ing on that I have been told that I need to be tight-lipped about. And sim­ply be­cause it can af­fect the in­tegri­ty of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion it­self. And ob­vi­ous­ly, this is not com­ing from me,” Ma­haraj said.

For his part, Ayube was scep­ti­cal that Ko­mal was kid­napped giv­en that he had ac­cess to What­sApp on his phone. He told the po­lice and me­dia as much and that he was in con­tact with Ko­mal, who had asked what re­sources they had avail­able to him to help find a way out of Venezuela.

Ma­haraj said Ko­mal had se­lec­tive ac­cess to his phone.

“They (the kid­nap­pers) did al­low him to use his phone to get what­ev­er de­mands they want­ed, and then the phone was tak­en back. So, it’s not like he has the phone all the time and was scrolling Face­book and YouTube and all of that. It was on­ly when they gave him the phone to con­tact his wife that is when he had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use his phone,” he said.

It was Josann’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to mon­i­tor her phone to ne­go­ti­ate her hus­band’s re­lease and man­age through the me­dia mael­strom while tak­ing care of her daugh­ters.

The stakes—her hus­band’s life and her fam­i­ly’s fu­ture—were high.

“It was in­deed very dif­fi­cult, es­pe­cial­ly when the girls kept ask­ing for their dad. I will nev­er wish this on any­one. It was like liv­ing a night­mare,” she told the Sun­day Guardian.

Ko­mal’s re­turn

Ma­haraj said that Ko­mal’s kid­nap­pers, who were un­masked and armed, did not un­der­stand Eng­lish, so they al­lowed him to use the phone to mes­sage Josann on the ran­som re­quest.

He said that Ko­mal was able to call home “on one or two oc­ca­sions.” Ma­haraj said that while cap­tive, Ko­mal was forced to sleep on the floor and was fed bread and wa­ter twice a day. He did not show­er for two weeks. He was al­lowed to use the wash­room.

“He was threat­ened with dis­mem­ber­ment when they found that they were tak­ing too long to or­gan­ise the ran­som,” he said.

Af­ter a week-long ne­go­ti­a­tion, a ran­som was paid, and Ma­haraj said they wait­ed for Ko­mal to come home.

“When they re­leased him, they dropped him off on Chatham Beach. He had to swim to the shore be­cause, again, how it works is when a boat comes in­to shore, it can­not come all the way in sim­ply be­cause of the wave. So they dropped him a lit­tle way off, and he had to swim in. He walked along the road from Chatham’s beach to the main road it­self,” he said.

At that point, his phone was tak­en away. He was giv­en dif­fer­ent clothes to wear by his ab­duc­tors. The first shop he spot­ted, he went to ask to bor­row a phone to call Josann. The own­er de­nied his re­quest. She sub­se­quent­ly took a screen­grab from her cam­era footage (see pic­ture) to share with po­lice. Ko­mal fared bet­ter at the sec­ond shop where he stopped. He was al­lowed to make sev­er­al calls—his wife (where he sent his pin lo­ca­tion) and the po­lice (who were on stand­by to pick him up).

Ma­haraj said he was the fourth per­son Ko­mal con­tact­ed.

Ko­mal stayed in the shop un­til the po­lice ar­rived and took him to the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal. A pho­to tak­en of him at the hos­pi­tal was wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed. Af­ter he was dis­charged he went home.

“For­tu­nate­ly enough, he was not phys­i­cal­ly harmed. How­ev­er, he did suf­fer from not drink­ing and things like that,” he said.

Sun­day Guardian: Was the ran­som in cash or cryp­tocur­ren­cy?

Ma­haraj: Cash.

Sun­day Guardian: In T&T? or Venezuela?

Ma­haraj: T&T.

Sun­day Guardian: Why Ko­mal? What was the mo­tive?

Ma­haraj: Fi­nan­cial ben­e­fit.

Sun­day Guardian: What guar­an­tee do you have that the per­pe­tra­tors will leave the fam­i­ly alone?

Ma­haraj: Again, we have no guar­an­tee of that.

Sun­day Guardian: How close is the po­lice to track­ing down the per­pe­tra­tors of this in­ci­dent?

Ma­haraj: They are do­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

He said that while Ko­mal was not a rich in­di­vid­ual, he is rich in in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. Ma­haraj want­ed to make it clear that Ko­mal did not call Ayube first, to alert him of his re­turn.

“That is false. Ab­solute­ly,” he said. In fact, he said, Ayube called him to ask whether Ko­mal was found.

“There was ab­solute­ly no call made to the Hunters as­so­ci­a­tion (the Ayube fac­tion) what­so­ev­er be­cause the Hunters ss­so­ci­a­tion were not peo­ple that, how should I put it, pro­vid­ed a lot of faith and trust in­to this sit­u­a­tion, re­gard­less of what was said from them,” he said.

When the Sun­day Guardian point­ed out that they were the first peo­ple to share a so­cial me­dia post and bring aware­ness to Ko­mal’s dis­ap­pear­ance, he re­spond­ed, “Yes. They did share. A lot of oth­er peo­ple shared the post, too. And I agree with you on that.

“Well, my­self and the fam­i­ly un­der­stand that peo­ple were con­cerned about it. Peo­ple prayed for his well­be­ing, and peo­ple want­ed him back or want­ed him to come back alive. We un­der­stand. We un­der­stand that. How­ev­er, he has come back alive, and there are nu­mer­ous con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries of why he went away or why he dis­ap­peared. And again, it was nev­er re­port­ed as a kid­nap­ping. It was al­ways left as a miss­ing per­son,” Ma­haraj said.

It was the fam­i­ly state­ment on Au­gust 3, which said he was kid­napped.

The the­o­ries of what hap­pened posit­ed on so­cial me­dia and ex­plored by the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping (AKU) stretched from a cryp­to deal gone bad to an il­lic­it af­fair with a Venezue­lan na­tion­al in which he was duped.

Ma­haraj de­nied the the­o­ries in the pub­lic do­main. For her part, Josann finds the scruti­ny in­tru­sive.

Clues about Ko­mal

Clues to Ko­mal are found on his so­cial me­dia. He ap­pears to be a fam­i­ly man, with his wife and daugh­ters ap­pear­ing on his Face­book and Tik­Tok ac­counts.

He sup­ports In­di­an cul­ture (his fa­ther is a pun­dit) and was a judge at the Grand Fi­nals of Mas­tana Ba­har 2023.

On X, he’s fol­low­ing 30 ac­counts, most of which are bit­coin-re­lat­ed and the sit­com, Big Bang The­o­ry.

He has on­ly 12 fol­low­ers, which in­clude his wife, and just sev­en posts, most of which are from 2015.

In one in­stance, he post­ed his cell­phone num­ber on X with the mes­sage: If u need a math tu­tor, call the math god @ (cell num­ber).

When the Sun­day Guardian ex­plained the pub­lic in­ter­est in the mat­ter, Ma­haraj re­spond­ed, “In all fair­ness, we don’t owe the pub­lic two cents. The pub­lic was not there when we had to deal with ran­som. The pub­lic was not there when we had to deal with the is­sue of not hear­ing from Ka­mal for days on end. The pub­lic did not have to deal with the men­tal an­guish that the fam­i­ly had to han­dle.

“And we were be­ing ad­vised by the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit not to say cer­tain things be­cause it would ham­per the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and cre­ate is­sues. It is not that we don’t want to clear his name. There are al­le­ga­tions out there that are to­tal­ly pre­pos­ter­ous and to­tal­ly ridicu­lous. But at this point in time, we can­not say what has ful­ly hap­pened be­cause we have been ad­vised that we should not do that.

“We don’t owe the pub­lic an ex­pla­na­tion at this point in time. Be­cause we can­not give the pub­lic an ex­pla­na­tion at this point in time,” he said.

“I agree that the pub­lic was out there. Yes, I agree that they prayed. But I didn’t know that when you pray for some­body, you ex­pect some­thing in re­turn,” he added.

How is Ko­mal now? ‘Phys­i­cal­ly? the Sun­day Guardian asked.

“He’s do­ing bet­ter. He’s ac­tu­al­ly sit­ting now. You know, he’s re­gain­ing his strength. He’s do­ing bet­ter phys­i­cal­ly. The men­tal as­pect is where we have to be con­cerned be­cause, again, this is a trau­mat­ic or­deal that he went through, re­gard­less of what oth­er peo­ple might think.

“And be­ing away from your fam­i­ly, be­ing alone, it would take its toll on any­one, not know­ing whether they are go­ing to be re­turned, whether they’re go­ing to be killed, whether they may nev­er see their daugh­ters again.

“So it was a very trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence for him. So he has a long way to go with re­gards to get­ting that sense of se­cu­ri­ty back men­tal­ly,” said Ma­haraj.

Ko­mal: I shall ig­nore the neg­a­tiv­i­ty, we are on bor­rowed time

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ko­mal said, “Thank you, God, and every­one who showed their sup­port by pray­ing and putting pos­i­tive en­er­gy out there. It was in­deed well re­ceived on our end. I shall ig­nore the neg­a­tiv­i­ty mov­ing for­ward be­cause it is al­ready a dif­fi­cult time as it is. Life is too short, and I know that we are here on bor­rowed time, so I am grate­ful to see an­oth­er day.”