For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has claimed that a hu­man traf­fick­ing case in­volv­ing six peo­ple in­clud­ing an act­ing school prin­ci­pal, a pas­tor, a lawyer, and her el­der­ly moth­er, that was dis­missed due to a lack of ev­i­dence, was mis­han­dled.

Grif­fith made the claim last Wednes­day af­ter hu­man traf­fick­ing, kid­nap­ping, and false im­pris­on­ment charges against act­ing prin­ci­pal Cheryl Kallicha­ran-Be­har­ry, pas­tor Glen Awong, at­tor­ney Lena Jag­ger­nath, her el­der­ly moth­er In­dra, An­tho­ny Marchan, and Robert An­drews were dis­missed on Tues­day.

Grif­fith, who per­son­al­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a raid at Awong’s Trans­formed Life Min­istries in Arou­ca in late 2019, which re­sult­ed in the re­lease of al­most 70 res­i­dents who were pur­port­ed­ly be­ing held against their will and led to the charges, ques­tioned why nei­ther he nor of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) were not asked to par­tic­i­pate in the pros­e­cu­tion.

“This sug­gests a poor han­dling of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as they failed to pro­vide the nec­es­sary ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute the case,” Grif­fith said.

“This ev­i­dence would have al­so in­clud­ed video footage of the raid and the dis­cov­ery of im­ple­ments such as ba­tons, hand­cuffs, shack­les, and tasers,” he added.

Grif­fith claimed that dur­ing his tenure ju­nior po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors were paired with civil­ian at­tor­neys to pre­vent cas­es from be­ing dis­missed pre­ma­ture­ly.

He al­so not­ed that he in­sti­tut­ed mea­sures to en­sure the court at­ten­dance of po­lice of­fi­cers. He claimed that the poli­cies were dis­man­tled af­ter his tenure came to an end.

“It seems that we are back to a sit­u­a­tion where ju­nior of­fi­cers with ba­sic le­gal train­ing are rep­re­sent­ing the State against sea­soned de­fence at­tor­neys,” he said.

Grif­fith al­so al­leged that the col­lapse of the case was par­tial­ly due to the in­ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of ev­i­dence from some of the pur­port­ed “de­tainees”, who were found to have men­tal health is­sues.

“This flaw can­not be al­lowed to per­sist and must be amend­ed to en­sure greater re­spect for in­di­vid­ual rights be­cause it sug­gests that these peo­ple can be raped, robbed, men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly abused, and they do not have a voice against those who per­pe­trat­ed these acts against them in our jus­tice sys­tem,” Grif­fith said. Speak­ing with me­dia per­son­nel at their at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge’s of­fice on Tues­day, Kallicha­ran-Be­har­ry, Awong, and the Jag­ger­naths claimed that they were not sur­prised by the out­come.

Kallicha­ran-Be­har­ry, whose son and daugh­ter were the al­leged vic­tims in the case, said: “I al­ways say that the truth al­ways comes to light. What­ev­er rea­sons we were ar­rest­ed for, to­day, we are jus­ti­fied and vin­di­cat­ed.

“I was wrong­ful­ly im­pris­oned just for try­ing to get help for my chil­dren,” she added.

Awong ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments over the out­come of the case.

“Vic­to­ry was al­ways there. We know that we nev­er had a case. We thank God for this vic­to­ry,” he said.

Awong claimed that the probe in­to his or­gan­i­sa­tion, which pro­vides ser­vices to the fam­i­lies of men­tal health pa­tients and drug ad­dicts, was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed as it came af­ter it sued the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment over un­paid fees re­lat­ed to a pro­gramme for street dwellers.

“First to be­gin, noth­ing ex­ists in the mat­ter here was hu­man traf­fick­ing. If they (the po­lice) take al­le­ga­tions they have to face the con­se­quences now,” Awong added.

He claimed that while he and his fam­i­ly suf­fered some em­bar­rass­ment over be­ing pros­e­cut­ed, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s rep­u­ta­tion was un­tar­nished in the eyes of many mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Jag­ger­nath’s sis­ter Sharon Jag­ger­nath-Mo­hammed was ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to the case but was not charged along­side her sis­ter and their moth­er.

Jag­ger­nath-Mo­hammed not­ed that the pros­e­cu­tion had and will con­tin­ue to have a neg­a­tive im­pact on her fam­i­ly’s lives.

She claimed that she and her sis­ter lost nu­mer­ous clients while their chil­dren were alien­at­ed and bul­lied in school. She al­so claimed that she was stopped and ques­tioned about the case by Unit­ed States of­fi­cials dur­ing a trip to that coun­try last year.

“To­day is a kind of bit­ter-sweet day. Yes, we got jus­tice but it would nev­er erase what we went through,” Jag­ger­nath-Mo­hammed said.

“Our chil­dren have suf­fered un­nec­es­sar­i­ly,” Jag­ger­nath-Mo­hammed added.

While Jag­ger­nath-Mo­hammed not­ed that her rel­a­tives and their for­mer co-ac­cused would now vig­or­ous­ly pur­sue ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion cas­es, she main­tained that com­pen­sa­tion would not suf­fice.

“They (the State) could nev­er pay us for the rep­u­ta­tions that were lost and af­fect­ed here. They could nev­er pay us for the in­tegri­ty they dam­aged here,” she said.

The group was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Mario Mer­ritt, Alex­ia Romero, and Danielle Ram­per­sad.