Last Updated on Monday, 26 September 2016, 13:49 by Written By Denis Chabrol
Self-confessed drug lord, Barry Dataram is believed to have fled Guyana to neighbouring Suriname, before a City Magistrate could have disclosed her decision on whether he should be freed on a cocaine trafficking charge, authorities said.
Although Dataram is believed to have left via the Guyana- Suriname back-track route across the Corentyne River, law enforcement agents said he was carrying a forged travel document. “Intelligence indicates that he left Guyana for Suriname and that he is travelling with forged documents and an assumed name,” a senior law enforcement agent told Demerara Waves Online News
A senior official of Guyana’s Immigration and Passport Office, when contacted Monday, did not think that Dataram was issued with a passport in another name.
Former Home Affairs Minister, Clement Rohee said he would have expected the Customs Anti Narcotics Agency (CANU) to do their work professionally to ensure that he did not “disappear.”
“The party views Dataram’s disappearance as a second slap in the face of the Granger administration who had recklessly legitimized his questionable bona fides by setting up a Commission of Inquiry into the allegations he made against CANU. The first slap in Granger’s face was when the Commission of Inquiry came up empty handed,” the PPP General Secretary added.
Rohee refused to make a comparison between Dataram and convicted drug lord, Shaheed ‘Roger’ Khan who had escaped a joint police-army manhunt and ended up in Suriname where he and several associates had been arrested.
Khan was subsequently held by American federal agents at Trinidad’s Piarco International Airport and taken to New York for trial, conviction and imprisonment.
City Magistrate, Judy Latchman has since issued arrest warrants for Dataram, his common-law wife Anjanie Boodnarine and those who had posted bail for their pre-trial liberty. Two other co-accused – Kevin Charran and Trevor Gouveia- have been warned against failing to appear in court.
The four are facing trial for allegedly being in possession of 129.230 kilogrammes (284 pounds) of cocaine. The Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) states that the narcotic was found on April 16, 2015 at Dataram’s house located at 661 Silver Dam, Fourth Avenue, Diamond Housing Scheme.
