A promi­nent civ­il lawyer and three oth­er per­sons have been de­tained for ques­tion­ing of the traf­fick­ing of per­sons in the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Trans­formed Life Min­istries in Arou­ca in which 69 peo­ple were res­cued from cages in Oc­to­ber this year fol­low­ing an in­ten­sive Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Se­nior po­lice sources told Guardian Me­dia that the at­tor­ney was picked up in the wee hours of this morn­ing by of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team(SORT) in an op­er­a­tion co­or­di­nat­ed by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith and head­ed by Sgt Mark Her­nan­dez of SORT.

The SORT team al­so picked up an­oth­er fe­male and two males for ques­tion­ing in North and West Trinidad dur­ing the ear­ly morn­ing op­er­a­tion.

All will be ques­tioned in re­la­tion to the traf­fick­ing of per­sons re­lat­ed to the TLM bust.

Se­nior po­lice sources say they have been work­ing tire­less­ly around the clock over the last two and a half months to piece this del­i­cate and ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion to­geth­er which al­so meant speak­ing with sev­er­al of the vic­tims res­cued.

Six­ty-nine peo­ple rang­ing from the ages of 19 to 70 years were found locked away in cages at a church lo­cat­ed along the East­ern Main Road in Arou­ca in ear­ly Oc­to­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith who spoke to the Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed's Lead Ed­i­tor of In­ves­tiga­tive desk Mark Bas­sant, "These peo­ple both men and women are be­lieved to be vic­tims of "mod­ern day slav­ery" and "hu­man traf­fick­ing". His com­ments came fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery at the Trans­formed Life Min­istry Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre made on that day.

"What we be­lieve is that we have cracked what we be­lieve is the biggest hu­man traf­fick­ing ring in the coun­try...some of them said they have been here for years...this is a much big­ger pic­ture and we have to in­ves­ti­gate each and every case...this re­lates to vir­tu­al slav­ery with what we have seen here. Some of them say they have been tor­tured. It is such a big­ger pic­ture with prof­it be­ing made out of this...fam­i­ly mem­bers de­lib­er­ate­ly send­ing their loved ones here and ex­tract­ing the prof­its from the fam­i­lies, " Grif­fith said.

He de­scribed the scenes as "bar­bar­ic", adding then, "Per­sons are seen in cages, hand­cuffed...per­sons were be­ing tor­tured. We saw tasers and ba­tons...and again this is a sit­u­a­tion of vir­tu­al mod­ern day slav­ery."