RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Re­lief and emo­tion over­came Kr­ishen­deo Bas­deo on Sat­ur­day night af­ter his wife, Sabi­ta Bas­deo, was freed fol­low­ing months of al­leged cap­tiv­i­ty, abuse and forced labour at the hands of a Pe­nal woman and her teenage son.

Bas­deo, 42, was res­cued af­ter what in­ves­ti­ga­tors de­scribed as a pro­longed or­deal in which she was al­leged­ly beat­en, threat­ened and pre­vent­ed from re­turn­ing to her fam­i­ly.

For months, dis­turb­ing videos of the al­leged abuse cir­cu­lat­ed in Pe­nal com­mu­ni­ty chat groups, show­ing the woman be­ing as­sault­ed. De­spite the footage, her hus­band said re­peat­ed at­tempts to ob­tain po­lice as­sis­tance were un­suc­cess­ful.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he said, claim­ing he vis­it­ed the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion on four oc­ca­sions and the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion twice with­out re­ceiv­ing as­sis­tance.

Some of the videos re­port­ed­ly showed the vic­tim be­ing beat­en with a cut­lass, while oth­ers de­pict­ed acts of hu­mil­i­a­tion and tor­ture.

The fam­i­ly, who live in a par­tial­ly con­struct­ed shack at Ram­lal Av­enue, Pla­tan­ite Trace, Bar­rack­pore, al­so at­tempt­ed to in­ter­vene di­rect­ly. Kr­ishen­deo said he and his two sons, aged 14 and 17, went to the lo­ca­tion where Sabi­ta was al­leged­ly be­ing held, but were beat­en and chased away. He added that his youngest son has no birth cer­tifi­cate, while the el­der had to leave school due to fi­nan­cial con­straints.

Kr­ishen­deo said Sabi­ta, who grew up in the forest­ed ar­eas of Pe­nal Rock Road, nev­er at­tend­ed school and al­so has no birth reg­is­tra­tion. He said she left home in 2019 to vis­it her moth­er in San Fran­cique, where she was al­leged­ly of­fered work as a do­mes­tic helper.

“She nev­er came back home. They locked her up and kept her there to work. They nev­er paid her and threat­ened to kill her if she tried to leave,” he said.

The case took a turn last week af­ter vice pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Cross So­ci­ety, Ed­ward Mood­ie, re­port­ed­ly iden­ti­fied Sabi­ta in a vi­ral video that al­so showed the as­sault of an el­der­ly man. Mood­ie be­gan trac­ing her back­ground and even­tu­al­ly con­tact­ed her fam­i­ly.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro was alert­ed and mo­bilised of­fi­cers, who con­duct­ed search­es at three lo­ca­tions on Sat­ur­day in an ef­fort to lo­cate Sabi­ta. Those ini­tial at­tempts were un­suc­cess­ful.

Po­lice said Sabi­ta was lat­er tak­en to the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion by the same in­di­vid­u­als ac­cused of hold­ing her. Up­on ar­rival, she al­leged­ly broke free and ran to of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing Cpl Lee Lum and PC Ram­sar­ran, seek­ing as­sis­tance.

Of­fi­cers ob­served vis­i­ble in­juries to her face and hands. She lat­er told in­ves­ti­ga­tors that since last Sep­tem­ber she had been forced to per­form do­mes­tic du­ties while be­ing held against her will. She al­leged she was re­peat­ed­ly beat­en, burned, had her head slammed against a wall and threat­ened with death if she at­tempt­ed to es­cape.

Po­lice al­so record­ed a state­ment from one of her sons, who said he was as­sault­ed when he pre­vi­ous­ly tried to vis­it his moth­er.

“My moth­er has been there for years now. They promised her a job, but when she went, they kept her there and nev­er want­ed to send her back home,” the teenag­er said, adding that he and his sib­ling were al­so beat­en and threat­ened.

Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro praised pub­lic co­op­er­a­tion in the case, say­ing cit­i­zen in­ter­ven­tion was crit­i­cal in bring­ing the mat­ter to light.

Sabi­ta was tak­en for med­ical treat­ment and lat­er re­ferred for fur­ther eval­u­a­tion. She has al­so been of­fered sup­port through the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit.

Mood­ie has since called for pro­tec­tion for the fam­i­ly, cit­ing their vul­ner­a­ble liv­ing con­di­tions and the need for ur­gent so­cial sup­port, in­clud­ing prop­er reg­is­tra­tion and state as­sis­tance.

Po­lice said in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing, with sev­er­al charges, in­clud­ing false im­pris­on­ment, ex­pect­ed to be laid.