Mark Bas­sant and Rishard Khan

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day plead­ed with cit­i­zens to come for­ward with in­for­ma­tion on the kid­nap­ping of An­drea Bharatt, 23, as he ad­dressed a news con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain. 

“When these things hap­pen there are peo­ple among us in the pop­u­la­tion who know what hap­pened. And all I could say is that to who­ev­er is lis­ten­ing - if you know some­thing about this young la­dy and what is hap­pen­ing to her, just re­mem­ber that the up­hold­er is worse than the thief,” he said.

Bharatt, a clerk at­tached to the Ari­ma Mag­is­trate’s Court was kid­napped af­ter en­ter­ing a what ap­peared to be a taxi - a white Nis­san Ver­sa. Since then four sus­pects were de­tained for ques­tion­ing in her dis­ap­pear­ance.

“If you know some­thing, you can safe­ly say some­thing to the au­thor­i­ties to as­sist us in re­cov­er­ing her. In these crimes and sim­i­lar crimes and crimes in gen­er­al, there’s usu­al­ly- al­most al­ways- some­body who knows some­thing that is use­ful to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and search. Please if you are that per­son, come for­ward or get the in­for­ma­tion to law en­force­ment or some­body who would get it to law en­force­ment to the search can be fo­cused and have a bet­ter chance at be­ing suc­cess­ful,” Dr Row­ley said.

The prime min­is­ter said he re­fus­es to be­lieve, from what he has seen, that there are peo­ple who do not know what has hap­pened.

An­oth­er day with­out suc­cess

Mean­while, for a third straight day, po­lice of­fi­cers and hunters scoured miles of for­est around the Fish­ing Pond area in San­gre Grande in the hope of find­ing ad­di­tion­al clues.

While po­lice con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia they had un­cov­ered a po­ten­tial clue on Tues­day, they were hop­ing yes­ter­day to build on this and ex­tend­ed their search to oth­er forest­ed ar­eas from where they had be­gun on Mon­day in Non­pariel Road in Fish­ing Pond San­gre Grande.

On Wednes­day they ex­tend­ed this search fur­ther north with the as­sis­tance of hunters near the Gor­don Farm set­tle­ment area and lat­er at Phan­choo Road in Fish­ing Pond.

Sev­er­al hunters combed the Gor­don Farm area for more than four hours but found noth­ing. Ren Gopiesingh, one of the hunters, said they made thor­ough checks through­out that area but did not find any­thing that could as­sist the po­lice in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“We just want the pub­lic to say any­thing that can help the po­lice Think about what her fa­ther and fam­i­ly is go­ing through,” he said.

Close to two pm, a con­voy of po­lice ve­hi­cles left the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion and made their way deep in­to the Fish­ing Pond area in­to Phan­choo Road.

The road which is ap­prox­i­mate­ly two miles, comes to a dead-end and is heav­i­ly forest­ed. Close to 50 of­fi­cers en­tered the forest­ed area and spent sev­er­al hours hop­ing to find any fur­ther clues that could as­sist them in lo­cat­ing Bharatt.

A se­nior po­lice source told Guardian Me­dia, “We got some in­tel­li­gence and we had to search this area. Dur­ing their search, they found a weed field that was de­stroyed but noth­ing was found. Peo­ple are say­ing things on so­cial me­dia that’s not true,” he said.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day call­ing on peo­ple to de­sist from spread­ing false in­for­ma­tion con­nect­ed to Bharatt’s case.

Claims be­ing made on so­cial me­dia were that Bharatt had died and some peo­ple had been call­ing the fam­i­ly of­fer­ing con­do­lences.

The se­nior source said they had not ob­tained any oth­er de­fin­i­tive clues up to late yes­ter­day evening, but were hop­ing to re­sume their search to­day.

Re­ward reach­es $500,000

The re­wards of­fered for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the safe re­turn of Bharatt reached $500,000, due most­ly to a big pledge by Crime Show host Ian Al­leyne.

Al­leyne yes­ter­day of­fered to pay a re­ward of $400,000 to any­one with in­for­ma­tion that could lead to find­ing her.

He made the an­nounce­ment on his week­day Crime Watch show yes­ter­day, ask­ing any­one with in­for­ma­tion to con­tact him.

Mean­while, Col­in Bis­soon­dath, pres­i­dent of Full Throt­tle Hunt­ing Club who has been as­sist­ing the po­lice in their search, has pledged $25,000.

“It’s time to find An­drea. Crime Stop­pers have put out a re­ward of $50,000 and Mode Alive $25,000 and now I am pledg­ing a re­ward of $25,000. So that makes $100,000. We need to find her. I am tak­ing it per­son­al­ly and I have not eat­en or slept since then. If some­one knows some­thing, make a phone call. I am plead­ing with the pub­lic,” said Bis­soon­dath.

At­tor­ney: Sus­pects re­leased

Mean­while at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali, who is rep­re­sent­ing two sus­pects, ages 20 and 26, claimed last night they were re­leased by po­lice.

The sus­pects, who both have the same first name and live in dif­fer­ent ar­eas of Ari­ma, were re­leased short­ly af­ter 6 pm yes­ter­day evening.

Ac­cord­ing to Ali, one man is un­em­ployed while the oth­er is a PH taxi dri­ver.

“The TTPS in ex­am­in­ing the phone records of one of the male sus­pects were able to lo­cate a fe­male cor­re­spon­dent who was pos­ses­sion of an item that al­leged­ly be­longed to the miss­ing An­drea Bharatt,” Ali said.

Ali, who is al­so rep­re­sent­ing the woman, al­so said that an­oth­er man was ar­rest­ed al­leged­ly through her di­rec­tion. She re­mains in po­lice cus­tody.

Po­lice, how­ev­er, main­tained that all sus­pects re­main in cus­tody.