A week after she was reportedly abducted by four men, Kunti Deopersad returned home yesterday after she managed to escape from her captors using a hairpin to unlock the door.
Deopersad account of the unusual kindness from her abductors, while she was locked in a room with another woman for a week, has left investigators confused.
The 39-year-old woman said she was fed vegetarian food at her request and was kept blindfolded for most of the time so that she could not see the face of her abductors.
She was never physically harmed even though she stole a chance to call her husband. Days later, Deopersad said, she was able to escape by picking a lock using a hairpin.
Sitting on a chair at her Oropouche South Trace, Barrackpore home, Deopersad said she returned home around 9.30 am and was relieved to see her husband, Tilkee Gopaul, 61, and their seven children—aged 13 to 22. The couple has been together for 23 years.
Recalling the ordeal, Deopersad said she went to the Princes Town Health Facility to get medicine for a skin condition on March 21.
Around 4.30 pm that day, Deopersad said she walked down to Market Street, Princes Town to get a taxi to return home. However, she said four men cornered her and whispered to her to get into a car. Asked if anyone was around, Deopersad said no.
When asked how nobody was around the Market Street at that hour, Deopersad said there were people but nobody heard what happened because the abductors were speaking quietly. She said the four men put her and another woman in the car and blindfolded them. The abductors were sitting in the middle of the back seat while the two women were sitting on either side of the window in the back seat, Deopersad said.
Asked why she made no attempt to jump out of the car or to scream, Deopersad said she was afraid. After driving for half an hour, Deopersad said they were taken into a room. She could not hear anything the men were saying because they were talking softly, she added. She said she was kept in the dark room for seven days.
Asked whether she had conversations with the other abducted woman, Deopersad said no. She said at times the woman was not blindfolded so she was unaware whether the woman was affiliated with the abductors. However, she was never ill-treated.
“I told them I was vegetarian and they would buy rice and chow mien or roti for me. And they would give us soft drinks and water. They did not hurt us in any way,” she said.
A day after the abduction, Deopersad said one of the abductors accidentally left their phone on a table in the room and she sent a call me request to her husband. She said he called her back and she told him she was abducted. The men eventually took away the phone from her but they never showed her any violence.
Around 9 am yesterday, Deopersad said the four men eventually left the room. She said the other woman took out a hairpin and together they picked the lock.
She said she was able to run out of the house and followed a track which took her into the heart of Princes Town.
Deopersad said she did not go to the police immediately but instead took a taxi and went home.
Her husband later called the police who took Deopersad in for an interview.
Her eldest daughter said yesterday that she was concerned that her mother was never taken for a medical examination by the police.
“We don’t think the police is taking this seriously,” the daughter said.
Gopaul said he was relieved that Deopersad had come home. He said his wife was traumatised about the ordeal and did not remember a lot of what happened to her.
Police said yesterday they were investigating Deopersad’s story.
In 2016, a La Brea woman, Heather Barriteau, disappeared after leaving her home to do some shopping in San Fernando.
Her husband mounted a search to find her saying she was kidnapped but surveillance footage later showed her drinking at the Carat Shed Bar on Mucurapo Street, San Fernando, with a male companion.
She was then seen liming at a parang in Marabella.
The woman later admitted that she fabricated the story.