GUYANESE self-confessed drug lord, Barry Dataram and his reputed wife, have been apprehended by the Surinamese authorities, Acting Police Commissioner, David Ramnarine confirmed on Friday afternoon.And law-enforcement authorities are currently making arrangements to have Dataram and his reputed wife,Anjanie Boodnarine, brought back to Guyana as early as this weekend.
The burly Dataram, along with Boodnarine, called ‘Cindy’, are wanted by the Guyana Police Force (GPF) for possession of ammunition without licence, and possession of narcotics for the purpose of trafficking.
Surinamese media reports are that the couple was arrested in the region of Latou, in South Paramaribo on Friday morning. The duo was arrested by the Arrestatie Team, a special law-enforcement squad.
Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, told this publication on Friday afternoon that the authorities are making moves to transport Dataram to these shores. “I have asked the Minister of Security and the police over there [Suriname] that he be brought back here as early as possible “, Ramjattan said.
He said that the process would be undertaken via the mutual legal assistance regime. “I requested him to be brought here as early as tomorrow [Saturday] “, he said.
Dataram and Boodnarine were charged, along with their friends Trevor Gouveia and Komal Charran, with having, on April 16, 2015, some 129.23kg of cocaine in their possession for the purpose of trafficking.
However, only Gouveia and Charran showed up to hear the ruling of Magistrate Judy Latchman recently. Dataram and his wife were no-shows at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court, but Magistrate Latchman fined the convicted drug lord $164.2M and sentenced him to 60 months imprisonment for being in possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.
It was widely believed that Dataram had fled to Suriname.

Late last month, President David Granger had urged members of the local law-enforcement community to work with their counterparts in neighbouring countries and to use every possible legitimate avenue to locate and transport the convicted Dataram back to Guyana.
In a Ministry of the Presidency release, President Granger had said that while he will not lay blame at the feet of any agency or individual, Dataram’s flight from Guyana was something which could have been avoided.

In the recording of the Ministry of the Presidency’s weekly television programme, ‘The Public Interest’, President Granger had told journalists that information suggests that Dataram is not a Guyanese and might have absconded using a passport not issued by the government of Guyana. The President assured the media that the police commissioner has been asked to make every effort to locate the suspect.
“…so my information is that he is not travelling on a Guyanese passport. So after his disappearance and we weren’t aware of his disappearance, we continued to work with our partners in the Caribbean to bring him to justice. If he is in Suriname as is suspected, the commissioner of police has been instructed to try to ascertain his whereabouts in neighbouring countries, but he is not using a Guyana passport, that much we know,” the Head of State said.
“Even though Mr Dataram might have a foreign passport, it might be a forged passport. I would urge all law-enforcement agencies to use every legitimate measure to bring him back into this jurisdiction so that he can serve his sentence,” the President said.
On April 16, 2015, at Dataram’s house located at 661 Silver Dam, Fourth Avenue, Diamond Housing Scheme, anti-narcotics agents found 33 parcels of cocaine in an upstairs bathroom, 180 pieces in a blue baby tub and 92 pieces in a black garbage bag in the downstairs dining room, and 142 pieces in a freezer with shrimp in the outer yard area. The cocaine amounted to 129.230 kilograms, which is equivalent to 284 pounds.
Drug-enforcement authorities in the United States have been after Dataram for years, however, extradition proceedings never materialised. He is wanted by the U.S. government for cocaine-smuggling offences as far back as 2007 and successive provisional warrants in that regard had failed, at least four times.
Dataram’s brushes with the law started in December 2007 when his wife at the time and their three-year-old daughter were kidnapped by two Venezuelans from their Ruimzeight, West Coast Demerara (WCD) home. Later that day, high drama unfolded at Charity on the Essequibo Coast between the Venezuelans and the police and one of the foreign nationals was subsequently shot dead in the confrontation with police. The kidnapping attempt was said to have been drug-related.
Shortly after, Dataram was arrested by police and held beyond the 72 hours which the law allows a person to be held in custody before being charged.
His lawyers, Glen Hanoman and the late Vic Puran , subsequently approached the court with a habeas corpus writ, but police asked for an extension to conclude their investigation into the kidnapping, which they said was drug-related.
Ever since then, Dataram made multiple court appearances, having being freed on several occasions in the process. He surfaced again, at last April’s drug bust.
The heavy-set drug lord, during an exclusive interview with HGPTV’s Travis Chase in February this year,had admitted his own involvement in the drug trade, but added that he had never been convicted for a criminal offence. He had levelled corruption allegations against members of the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) at the time.
A one-man Commission of Inquiry, which was undertaken by Retired Brigadier Bruce Lovell, subsequently cleared CANU of the allegations.