The fate of six fish­er­men lies with the ef­forts of their fam­i­lies to raise US$200,000 by Fri­day or else their kid­nap­pers said they will be­gin cut­ting off their vic­tims’ limbs.

Jagdesh Jude Jaikaran, 16, Lin­ton Manohar, 36, Bran­don Ar­joon, 28, broth­ers Ja­son O’Brien 38 and Jer­ry O’Brien 36, all of Morne Di­a­blo, Pe­nal and Ricky Ramb­harose 35, who lives in a neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ty, were re­port­ed to have been kid­napped and tak­en to Venezuela.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the men left the Morne Di­a­blo Fish­ing Fa­cil­i­ty aboard a pirogue around 4 pm on Sun­day to fish.

How­ev­er, they were held up by armed men at sea and tak­en to Venezuela. They were ex­pect­ed to re­turn home with their catch on Mon­day morn­ing.

In­stead, their fam­i­lies learned of the kid­nap­ping when one of the men con­tact­ed Manohar’s broth­er.

Hours lat­er, Manohar’s broth­er re­ceived the fright­en­ing voice note and a pic­ture of five of the fish­er­men sit­ting on the floor with masked men point­ing firearms at them.

At the be­gin­ning of the mes­sage, voiced by Manohar, a per­son in the back­ground says: “Talk fast and talk clear”. The ac­cent sound­ed Trinida­di­an and lead rel­a­tives to ques­tion whether they were in fact in Venezuela.

The mes­sage said: “Woi! Or­gan­ise and see if al­lyuh could make up the mon­ey by to­mor­row nah boy. Tell Jude moth­er them and Bran­don moth­er them to or­ga­nize nah boy. Get US$200,000 by Fri­day and sell all the ve­hi­cles nah boy and sell the house. Tell AV sell the house nah boy.” At this time, the per­son in the back­ground could be heard telling Manohar what the say.

Manohar con­tin­ued: “Make up the mon­ey nah, the man them se­ri­ous. By to­mor­row, ah want to know the an­swer. Be­cause if by to­mor­row they don’t know, they are cut­ting off my hand and one of Jer­ry hand and all them fel­las hands. We call­ing you back to­mor­row and let Re­shan know and all. Try to or­gan­ise and see who can or­gan­ise and make up the mon­ey nah. Fri­day is the dead­line for the US$200,000. Ah call­ing you ear­ly in the morn­ing. Please!”

Ar­joon’s fa­ther, Rod­ney Ar­joon, said that just Sat­ur­day he was at his son’s home. Rod­ney said Ar­joon was not at home so he told his grand­moth­er to warn him against go­ing to sea for the rest of the month be­cause of the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal un­rest in Venezuela. He said his fam­i­ly was try­ing to get some mon­ey, but could not raise the amount of mon­ey the kid­nap­pers have de­mand­ed. But as a Chris­t­ian, Rod­ney said, he was not fear­ful and was pray­ing to God for their safe re­turn.

“To be hon­est, I didn’t bring fear in­to my mind be­cause as a be­liev­er in God, you can­not be­lieve in God and not trust in him. Bot­tom line, I trust in God,” Rod­ney said.

He said the oth­er fish­er­men’s rel­a­tives had al­ready be­gun to sell off as­sets and were talk­ing with oth­er rel­a­tives abroad in hopes of rais­ing the ran­som.

Jaikaran’s moth­er, Mala Jairkaran, said she was hop­ing and pray­ing that her son would re­turn safe­ly. Once he re­turned, she said there will be no go­ing back to sea, al­though it was his pas­sion. But weigh­ing heav­i­ly on the minds of the fam­i­lies was that a fish­er­man by the name Bar­ry Boban went miss­ing at sea last year and nev­er re­turned. They fear that he was al­so kid­napped. They were al­so wor­ried that pira­cy and kid­nap­pings were be­com­ing the norm, which threat­ens the lives of lo­cal fish­er­men.

At the Morne Di­a­blo Fish­ing Fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, the yard was filled with pirogues that would usu­al­ly be at sea. Jaikaran’s broth­er Kirt Jaikaran said that it was al­ready tough for fish­er­men with NP’s dis­con­tin­u­ance of reg­u­lar gas at the pumps. Now their lives were at risk and it posed an end to their liveli­hood.

The kid­nap­pings came two weeks af­ter cousins Kendall Singh, 23 and Ken­rick Mor­gan, 17, of Moru­ga, were kid­napped at sea and tak­en to Venezuela and an ini­tial ran­som of US$40,000 was de­mand­ed for their re­lease.