Three in Trinidad charged with kidnapping and murder of US war veteran

by Stephen Cummings
Caribbean Net News Trinidad Correspondent
Email: stephen@caribbeannetnews.com

Thursday,  January 12, 2006

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad: Police in Trinidad have charged three persons in connection with the abduction and murder of 62-year-old US war veteran, Balram Maharaj. The suspects are now to appear in a Port of Spain court. 

Maharaj went missing nine months ago. He was taken from outside a bar in Aranguez, east of the capital Port of Spain, while in the company of friends. 

The three suspects are a 37-year-old man from Mayaro South Trinidad, said to be the son of popular calypsonian, a 40-year-old woman of Arima, which is just east of Port of Spain and a 27-year-old man of Lower San Cruz, the area where Maharaj's body was found buried. 

FBI agents working along with local police on Sunday discovered the mutilated body of Maharaj buried in two separate shallow graves and in two styrotex boxes in a forested area off Lower Santa Cruz, northeast of Port of Spain. 

Homicide detectives said the body appeared to have been chopped into pieces and later placed into two small plastic barrels before it was buried. 

Four suspects who were initially held and questioned for the crime led police to the discovery of the dismembered body. Two of the suspects are from the Santa Cruz area while the other two are from Mayaro South Trinidad.

Maharaj's abduction prompted the US embassy in Trinidad to offer a US$10,000 reward to anyone for information on the kidnapping. 

Family members in Trinidad with whom Maharaj was staying up until the time he was taken reportedly paid a small ransom for his safe release but his family never heard from him.

Maharaj was a Trinidadian who migrated to the US, later joining the US military. He was also a Vietnam war veteran. 

A pathologist who conducted an autopsy on the body on Monday could not determine the exact cause of Maharaj's death due to the advanced state of decomposition of the body. 

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