Surekha Bai ENGLEDOW

 

 

 
Name: Surekha Bai ENGLEDOW
   
Year of Birth: 1967
Sex: Female
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black
Height: 165cm
Build: Medium build
Complexion: Dark
Circumstances: Surekha Engledow, 29, had been travelling/camping at various locations around the Cape York/Cooktown area of QLD with her husband and three children. The last known sighting of Surekha was in the Cooktown area after spending a week in Cairns. Surekha has not been seen since May 1996. She is described as approximately 165cms tall, with a medium build and black hair. There are grave concerns for Surekha's welfare. Her husband and children have since left Australia. Her husband did not report her missing; 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. 

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.

 

Police prepare murder case against husband

Friday 18 May 2001
 
SYDNEY - Queensland police are preparing an application to extradite the husband of missing New Zealander Surekha Engledow to face a murder charge.

Mrs Engledow, aged 29, disappeared without trace during a camping holiday with husband Nicholas and their three children in May 1996.

The family arrived in Australia that month to start a new life after selling their home in Auckland.

Queensland detectives spent three weeks in New Zealand in February collecting more than 80 statements during inquiries in Auckland and Nelson.

Detective Senior Constable Karen Friedrichs said yesterday that police were now in the process of completing a brief of evidence for state prosecutors.

"Ultimately, the aim is to try to extradite Mr Engledow and present a murder charge against him," she said.

The application was still some months away, and she would not say with which country it would be lodged.

"The issue of where Mr Engledow is at the moment is very sensitive to what we are doing with the investigation," she said.

In September 1996, Mr Engledow, who is understood to be English by birth, returned to New Zealand with the children but without his wife, and began living in Nelson.

Police were not told that Mrs Engledow was missing until early 1997, when relatives tried to contact her.

In July 1997, Mr Engledow told Nelson police in a videotaped interview that his wife had run off with another man in Cairns.

Later that year, he won custody of the children from a cousin of Mrs Engledow and left New Zealand, reportedly for Britain.

Detective Senior Constable Friedrichs said the inquiries in New Zealand had produced "a lot of information."

"It just firmed up the evidence that we had of the likelihood of Mr Engledow's involvement in her disappearance," she said. "I believe we have a strong circumstantial brief."

Late last year, police made renewed attempts to retrace the family's movements through Queensland, which included an 1800km journey by four-wheel-drive vehicle from Brisbane to Cairns.

Detective Senior Constable Friedrichs said police believed Mrs Engledow disappeared in the Cape York region of North Queensland, but it was hard to pinpoint exactly where because of the size and nature of the area.

"We never expect to find a body because the type of terrain we are looking at is just a vast extent of bush and creeks and wildlife," she said.

"But we have narrowed down the period of time and a location where she did go missing."

- NZPA

 

Police seeking ex-girlfriend in missing person case

Tuesday 30 October 2001 - NZ Herald
 
Australian police investigating the disappearance of a former New Zealand woman are seeking an ex-girlfriend of the woman's husband.

Surekha Engledow vanished in Australia in May 1996 during a camping holiday with her husband, Nicholas Engledow, and their three children. The family had previously lived on the North Shore.

Australian police are considering whether to extradite Mr Engledow from England to face charges.

Detective Sergeant David Timms of Queensland said investigators were seeking a woman named Jill who was a girlfriend of Mr Engledow's during the mid-1980s. She was believed to be a Maori solo mother.

 

More than a dozen lives connected by mystery in FNQ

THE recent National Missing Persons Week yielded few leads about the 13 people still listed as missing in the Far North. The reasons they’ve vanished are varied - some by choice, others in suspicious circumstances - but all are tragic.

Pete Martinelli
September 8, 2018 - 5:00AM
The Cairns Post

EDITED

THEIR faces betray a mixed bag of emotions – happy, sad, confused and indifferent.

They are 13 lives all connected by the mystery of their whereabouts, last known to have been living or travelling in the Far North.

National Missing Persons Week last month yielded few leads about the 13 people still listed as missing in the Far North.

Crime Stoppers Queensland chief executive Trevor O’Hara said: “Reporting was quite low. There were 12 calls reportedly taken across Australia and in Queensland there were two.

“It does get more difficult for the old cases or for someone to build up the courage to tell us. Any information is useful to police.”

The figures betray the difficulty in finding the long-term missing.

“Since 1989 we were able to help locate three people, all who were classified as formal missing people,” Mr O’Hara said.

The cases of three women – Katie O’Shea, Allison Bernard, and Surekha Engledow – are believed to be suspicious.

In 1996, Ms Engledow disappeared in the Cooktown area while travelling with her husband and children. Her husband Nicholas was seen driving their four-wheel-drive alone in Cairns before he and the children flew from Brisbane to Samoa in September, and later on to New Zealand.

In June 1997, Queensland homicide squad detectives flew to NZ, where they questioned Mr Engledow for five hours.

He told them she had suddenly left the family when they returned to Cairns from the Daintree, claiming she had met up with a mystery Indian man named “Raj”, who police have never found.

“It is a worry that some are not found because there is no closure for the families,” Ms Cochrane said.

“There are some sad cases that are found deceased.”