Af­ter be­ing kid­napped and held hostage in the for­est for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 33 hours, the Sook­nanan fam­i­ly was res­cued by po­lice in Bar­rack­pore yes­ter­day. Two sus­pects re­mained in the cus­tody of Pe­nal CID last night while of­fi­cers launched a man­hunt for three oth­ers who were be­lieved to be in­volved in the kid­nap­ping.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith met with vic­tims at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal fol­low­ing the res­cue and re­vealed that de­spite be­ing bruised, Aaron Sook­nanan, 28, his wife Pao­la Sanchez-Sook­nanan, 26, their chil­dren Ri­car­do, five and Is­abel­la, three and their cousin Rox­an­na Gon­za­les, 37, suf­fered no life-threat­en­ing in­juries. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia learned that the women, both Venezue­lans, were se­vere­ly as­sault­ed by the kid­nap­pers. Grif­fith said while in­ves­ti­ga­tors had de­ter­mined a mo­tive for the kid­nap­ping he could not re­veal it since it could com­pro­mise the on­go­ing op­er­a­tion. He said the op­er­a­tion was dri­ven by in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and care­ful­ly ex­e­cut­ed, as there were times when the sit­u­a­tion could have been volatile.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]