Frankie Rajkumar, the father of missing hairdresser Ria Sookdeo, said he is baffled by media reports about a drug connection and link being made to missing businesswoman Carolyn Katwaroo in his daughter’s disappearance.
Katwaroo, 43, of Palmiste, went missing on September 18, 2015.
Her Mercedes Benz was found one day after on the side of the road at Union Hall, San Fernando.
However, in a telephone interview, yesterday, Rajkumar said that after 16 days and no forthcoming clues, he was left to wonder what was the truth and why his daughter was taken away from her family.
“I don’t know nothing about that, honestly, but after 16 days and getting no clue, it has left me to wonder. It is putting you to think further, putting you to think something happened to her, probably what they have done to her. I don’t want to say the word,” he said, referring to suspicions that she may be dead.
“People are going to all kind of different people and getting all kind of stories. All I am doing is praying and asking God, pleading with my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to bring my daughter home.
“Hope is the only thing I have now,” Rajkumar said.
Nightly prayers have been held at his Phillippine home since Sookdeo, 34, was abducted, by two men, after dropping off her two children, a boy aged five and girl aged nine, at the Picton Presbyterian School on September 22.
Reports indicate that as she attempted to turn her red Nissan X-Trail at Picton Estate Drive to get back to her Wellington Road home, a black Nissan X-Trail SUV pulled up behind, blocking her path.
Two men, wearing tactical gear, forced her out of her SUV and into theirs and drove off.
“I believe she would come home and when she does, I will hold the biggest thanksgiving and invite everyone to come,” her dad said.
Asked how her children have been coping, Rajkumar said, “All her little son is saying is ‘mummy lost, mummy lost’.
“Yesterday, (Thursday) I saw the little girl writing something. I only caught a glimpse of it but she was writing how sad she was feeling about her mummy’s disappearance. I asked her to let me see what she was writing but she shook her head. You could see the sadness on her face,” he said.
He again appealed to National Security Minister Edmund Dillon to send out the security forces to search for his daughter.
“I know he has children, and if he has a daughter and something like this were to happen to his daughter, he would know what I am going through right now.”
The police, who have questioned over 25 people, gave the assurance that the trail has not gone cold and they are vigorously pursuing every lead to find her. A suspended police officer who was detained by police were among those questioned.
Police have also released a sketch of a man, wearing what appears to be a police cap, as one of the men who grabbed Sookdeo.