Cellphone key in catching Vicky

The Organised Crime and Intelligence Unit detained escaped remand prisoner Vicky Boodram thanks to the Interception of Communications Act, which gives the Commissioner of Police authority to secretly listen in on phone conversations.

Sources revealed that Boodram made a call on a Digicel cellular phone hours after she was assisted in escaping from the Women’s Prison at Golden Grove on Monday afternoon. She used it to call a policeman and other people, including someone who was supposed to help smuggle her out of the country late Thursday night.

OCIU officers teamed up with colleagues from the SSA (Strategic Services Agency) led by Col George Robinson after receiving information from the Police Cyber Crime Unit whose officers seized the cellular phone belonging to the policeman. That number led them to Lachoos Road in Penal on Thursday. They began listening on Boodram’s conversations.

Around 6 pm on Thursday police went to a bar at Lachoos Road, where they met a 32-year-old woman who runs a Lotto booth. They told her they had information she was harbouring Boodram and asked her to accompany them to the house where Boodram was hiding. The woman cooperated with them and called Boodram, saying she was on her way home and to await her arrival.

When police surrounded the unfinished two-storey brick house around 6.40 pm, they found Boodram sitting in a chair on the upper floor. Both Boodram and the Lotto booth operator were taken into custody and put in a cell at the Penal police station.

Police also received information yesterday that the woman found with Boodram is the girlfriend of a man who is a well-known individual from Sea Lots who has rubbed shoulders with national leaders and politicians. The woman, police said, has a child with the Sea Lots man.

Police believe Boodram was supposed to leave the house later on Thursday evening to go to Cedros to be smuggled out of the country. A joint team of officers was therefore on standby in Cedros in the event that Boodram was able to elude police in Penal.

Police sources said Boodram did not appear to have slept on Thursday night and on Friday asked police to contact relatives for a change of clothing and meals. Up until 1 pm yesterday, no lawyer had visited her. Police sources said Boodram was given breakfast early yesterday and spent most of the day speaking very little to the police guarding her.