AAP General News (Australia)
12-08-2000
NT: Police investigate woman s 1996 disappearance in Top End
By Rod McGuirk

DARWIN, Dec 8 AAP - The disappearance of a woman while touring Queensland with her family four years ago is being investigated by homicide detectives in Darwin.
Surekha Bai Engledow, a 29-year-old ethnic Indian Fijian who had been living in New Zealand, disappeared during a camping holiday around Australia with her husband Nicholas
and their three children, then aged seven, five and one year old. She was last sighted by an independent witness in the Cooktown area in far north Queensland on June 6, 1996, Detective Senior Constable Jim Bryant, of the Queensland state homicide investigation group, said in Darwin today. A joint Queensland-Northern Territory investigation is concentrating on Darwin where the family are now known to have stayed in July/August of 1996. The purpose of the investigation was to test the truth of Mr Engledow's explanation of his wife's disappearance, Det Bryant said. Det Bryant would not detail that explanation, but said the circumstances that Mr Engledow, a British national, outlined were not suspicious. "Through our inquiries, we've revealed that the Engledows were in Darwin; whether she was with him or not, I'm not at liberty to say," he told AAP.
"What we're doing is checking the accuracy of his account." Police have located the Darwin business that fitted a car alarm to their Toyota Land Cruiser following a break-in and have appealed for public help to find where the family stayed in Darwin for four or five nights. The family had sold up in Picton, on the New Zealand south island, planning to move to Australia. They bought the four-wheel drive new in Brisbane and were touring Australia when Mrs Engledow disappeared. Mr Engledow went back to New Zealand but police believe he is now living in London with his children. She was reported missing by a relative in Melbourne in 1997 after her father in Fiji became ill and family members could not reach her.  Mr Engledow was interviewed by police in New Zealand in 1998 shortly before he left  the country. Det Bryant said police had not spoken to him about his wife's disappearance since.  "We have very grave fears for her safety," he said. "Her family have had no contact  since May 1996, which is unusual for her. "Also travelling with the family were the three children of that marriage -- two boys and a baby girl -- and it's just out of character for Surekha Engledow to leave them."

Resolute bid to find truth about friend

home of Narrow Neck woman Margaret Allis.

The mother-of-five is convinced that something terrible happened to Mrs Engledow soon after arriving in Australia with her family to start a new life in 1996.

Mrs Allis has kept a file of clippings, affidavits, photographs and other documents and has continued to put pressure on police to ensure that they keep investigating the case. The Queensland homicide squad says the investigation is now a top priority.

Mrs Allis met Mrs Engledow at the Narrow Neck Playcentre in 1992. The Fiji-Indian woman had moved to Auckland with her husband, Nicholas Engledow, a property investor 20 years her senior. He had flown to Fiji from Britain after she answered a newspaper advertisement, and married the then-teenager within three days.

They had sons Lawrence and Ashley, now aged 9 and 7, and daughter Elizabeth, now 5.

Mrs Allis said that late in 1995, Mrs Engledow came to her home "crying and frightened and complaining of verbal and physical abuse."
The police were called, but Mrs Engledow decided not to press charges. Mr Engledow also called police, to report his wife missing.

When Mrs Engledow again came crying to her friend about a week later, her husband called police to say she had kidnapped their children.

Mrs Engledow left her husband a third time, and stayed temporarily at a women's refuge. Mrs Allis took her to a lawyer to get non-molestation and custody orders.

Mrs Engledow alleged that her husband had launched a campaign of psychological abuse that included forcing her to eat beef against her Hindu custom, telling her in front of the children that she was crazy, disposing of the family jewellery, destroying all family photographs, selling her car and trying to sell all her belongings in a garage sale.

Mrs Allis said her friend won custody of the children and began living with relatives in Avondale.

But Mr Engledow convinced her to return by promising to take anger-management courses. He then began making plans to take the family to Australia, where he had previously lived.

Mrs Allis said Mrs Engledow was frightened at the prospect of leaving her friends, family and the support of the New Zealand legal system.

Her husband travelled to Australia by himself for a couple of weeks, and the rest of the family flew to Queensland on May 23, 1996.

Mr Engledow paid $56,000 cash for a Toyota LandCruiser in Brisbane, and the family set off for Cairns. It is thought that Mrs Engledow disappeared within four days. Her husband did not report her missing.

It was not until February 1997 that a relative living in Melbourne, who had been trying to reach Mrs Engledow to let her know her father had died, filed a missing-person report.

By this time, Mr Engledow had returned to New Zealand with the children and was living in Nelson.

In a videotaped interview in July 1997, he told police his wife had run off with a man called Raj.

Mrs Allis said Mrs Engledow would never have abandoned her children.

The missing woman's cousin in Auckland, Narish Gopal, won custody of the children late in 1997. But Mr Engledow took them out of the country, and is now believed to be in Britain.

Mrs Allis said the children stayed with her for a night shortly before they left New Zealand.

"I told them there was no way their mother had run off with another man. I said their mother loved them very much ... and she would only leave them if she died."

Mrs Allis hopes that one day the children will return to New Zealand and learn the truth about what happened to their mother.

 

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