New mystery over Vijay

THE BRIEF but rather strange exchange between Prime Minister Patrick Manning and Opposition MP Gillian Lucky in the House on Tuesday leaves us wondering whether we have been told the latest or the most relevant facts about the kidnapping of ten-year-old Vijay Persad. In response to Lucky’s indictment of the Government for its failure to find the abducted boy after so many months, the Prime Minister seems to have hinted that law enforcement agencies may know the whereabout of the missing ten-year-old. If this is the case, then their silence and their apparent lack of action are reprehensible, not only from the point of view of solving a major crime but also because the entire country has been caught up emotionally in what they see as the ordeal of Vijay and his family.

Speaking on the Budget, Lucky attacked the Government on the issue of crime and zeroed in on Vijay’s kidnapping. “If it is,” she said, “the Prime Minister, sitting in his role as the head of the National Security Council, has information, then let the public know everything is okay so we would stop worrying about people, but know that we may not get the details.” Based on the reports and information that were available, the Member for Pointe-a-Pierre bewailed the fact that, “In this country, we cannot find a ten-year-old boy who has gone missing.” She could only rely on available reports and information, but appealed to the authorities, “If Vijay Persad has been found, then put it in the public domain and let the facts be told.” Lucky lamented that because certain information could not be disseminated in public for security reasons, “We always have to sit back and hope that we are not being misled.”

It was then that the Prime Minister made the mysterious interjection: “I rise to suggest to the Honourable Member that to go purely on information in the media is to take a course of action that she knows will not do justice to the issue that she is discussing. She knows that. She’s a lawyer when she is operating in front of the courts. I say no more on the matter.” Now what can we make of such an observation? What does Mr Manning really mean, what is he saying not just to the Pointe-a-Pierre MP but to the Persad family and the entire country? If the information provided by the media on the kidnapping of Vijay does not do justice to this worrisome matter, then we can only conclude that the PM and the police are privy to other information that will. What is that information and why, after four months, it has not led to Vijay’s rescue or release?

The youngster was abducted from his Moruga home on June 21, but nothing has been heard either from his parents or from the police for quite some time. This newspaper has been informed that investigators apparently share Mr Manning’s view that there is more to Vijay’s kidnapping than meets the eye. So where does that leave this disturbing situation? Has the boy been found and the public not been told? In light of the “other information” — that which has not appeared in the media — has the case been closed, has it been placed in suspension, are the police now adopting a wait-and-see strategy or are they actively working on this secret information? For security reasons, they may not want to disclose everything to the media, but after four months the public need to have an update on the progress of their efforts to locate Vijay and to close this disturbing case.