By Paras Ramoutar
Port-of-Spain, March 13 (IANS) An Indian businessman, who came here from New Delhi three weeks ago, was abducted and robbed of his belongings by assailants, police said. The victim has been rescued.
Four people, including two women, were arrested after police intercepted the vehicle in which Faiyad Bartanwala was being taken to a secluded place at Carlsen Field area in Chaguanas town, about 20 km from this capital city of Trinidad and Tobago.
The four suspects, aged 18-21, will be presented before the Chaguanas Court Monday to face the charges of abduction and robbery, police said.
According to police, Bartanwala was in a car parked at Edinburgh Village, Chaguanas Friday when two men entered the vehicle and robbed him of $250 and his mobile phone. They then took Bartanwala to an unknown location, where two women joined them.
Following a tip-off from an eyewitness, police traced the vehicle at Carlsen Field, five kilometres from the scene of abduction, and rescued the victim.
Ethnic Indians constitute about 40 percent of the country's total population.
Like the New Zealand quake, the catastrophe in Japan was a result of the titanic geological forces operating around the Pacific "Ring of Fire".
This is a 25,000-mile belt of earthquakes and volcanoes encircling the Pacific Ocean, a chain of giant fault lines which separate some of the largest of the Earth's tectonic plates - the dozen-or-so slabs of solid rock which make up our planet's crust.
Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater, the Daily Mail reports.
Several continental and oceanic plates - the Pacific Plate, Philippine Plate, Eurasian Plate and North American Plate - meet in the Japan area, which is why there are so many volcanoes and hot springs across the nation.
Located in a volcanic zone so active, it is nicknamed the Pacific Ring of Fire, where catastrophic earthquakes occur several times each century.
The plates themselves consist of sheets of basalt and granite between five and 30 miles thick, underpinning both the continents and the ocean floors.
They float on the viscous, semi-molten rocks beneath the crust and are able to move, typically a few inches a year, propelled by currents deep in the mantle - the part of the Earth below the crust.
The 8.9-magnitude earthquake Friday afternoon set off huge tsunami waves, some as high as 10 metres, that rushed ashore for several kilometres along Japan's northeastern coast, sweeping everything in their path - buildings, cars, ships and people, and killing over 1,000 people.