On the afternoon of Wednesday, October 28, 2026, Guyana’s prominent opposition figure Azruddin Mohamed, head of the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) political movement, was taken into police custody at his residential property in Eccles, East Bank Demerara, as law enforcement escalates a wide-ranging investigation into his unauthorized possession of restricted government surveillance footage tied to two alleged shooting incidents that unfolded earlier that month. The arrest was formally confirmed by Deputy Commissioner Wendell Blanhum, who leads the Guyana Police Force’s elite Criminal Investigations Department.
Parallel law enforcement sources have revealed the detention is part of a broader probe into an alleged corrupt quid pro quo arrangement involving a 20-year-old serving police constable. According to official police allegations, the young officer confessed to downloading the sensitive surveillance video onto a portable flash drive before handing the storage device directly to Mohamed, in exchange for a payment of GY$800,000. Both the junior officer and his mother have remained in police custody as of Wednesday, a development that prompted the constable’s father to file an urgent habeas corpus motion in the High Court, seeking an immediate order to either produce the pair before a judicial officer for formal custody review or grant their unconditional or conditional release.
This latest arrest adds a new layer of complexity to a months-long, high-stakes legal saga surrounding the opposition leader, who previously appeared in court alongside his personal driver and a contracted videographer, with all three released on GY$750,000 bail each on joint charges of unlawful possession of a prohibited firearm, illegal ammunition ownership, and attempting to obstruct the course of justice by discharging a weapon in the vicinity of the private residence of Senior Superintendent Prem Narine, the head of the police force’s Special Branch unit. Narine has emerged as a central witness in ongoing extradition proceedings launched by United States authorities, who are seeking to transfer him to face trial on charges of money laundering, wire fraud, and mail fraud linked to his private gold trading operations. Notably, Azruddin Mohamed’s own father, Nazar “Shell” Mohamed, is also listed as a wanted fugitive by U.S. law enforcement on identical sets of financial crime allegations.
The contested surveillance footage at the heart of the current probe was publicly released by Mohamed during a packed press conference held two days prior, on Monday, October 26. The opposition leader presented the clip as concrete evidence to refute Narine’s official account of the October 12 late-night incident, in which Narine had claimed a shot was fired from the vehicle carrying Mohamed and his two associates while the group was inside the car. Mohamed has repeatedly alleged that Narine himself opened fire on the moving vehicle multiple times in a deliberate assassination attempt that night; no passengers sustained physical injuries in the incident, though multiple bullets struck and damaged the car’s exterior. Mohamed and his legal representative Siand Dhurjon, who were both present at the Kitty Police Station during a formal search of the vehicle in the immediate aftermath of the October 12 encounter, have publicly stated that a handgun mysteriously materialized under the car’s accelerator pedal with no clear chain of custody to link it to the opposition leader or his staff.