CoP: New info in Bharatt case linked to unsolved crime

POLICE COMMISSIONER Gary Griffith said the police uncovered information during their investigation into the kidnapping of Andrea Bharrat which may help solve other crimes.

Griffith made the disclosure during his media briefing on Thursday.

He said investigators received information that a person of interest in Bharrat's case may be linked to an unsolved crime which occurred 13 years ago.

"There is an individual who sent a message to me that her sister died some 13 years ago and it was at the hands of one of these individuals.”

Griffith said the information suggests that the suspect had dumped other bodies in the forest near Sangre Grande.

“He takes them and throws them into the forests, in an empty area.

"And that is what we have to deal with in the society. An individual like that, who people are aware of, and that has to obviously be a dysfunctional family. They are aware of what he would do: rape and throw a woman in a forest.

"But the concern is a man fall off a chair and not the young lady who is out there and we don’t know where they are or what they are doing?”
He was referring to a report the police gave of  the  cause of death  of a suspect in the Bharratt inquiry who died in police custody

Police and members of the Defence Force have been searching the forests around Sangre Grande, with help from  hunters and hikers.

Griffith said the search for Bharatt was a rescue mission and not a recovery. He said it was based on this information that the search was centred on the Sangre Grande forest.

Bharatt, 22, a clerk at the Arima magistrates' court, went missing after getting into a car she believed to be a taxi last Friday afternoon at King Street, Arima. A co-worker who travelled with her was dropped off safely, but Bharatt never arrived home.

Shortly after noon on Thursday, police received information about the decomposing body of a woman found over a precipice in the Heights of Aripo.