Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Two men from Pe­nal have been each grant­ed $250,000 bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court charged with hu­man traf­fick­ing.

Anand “Janobi” Ram­per­sad, of Mo­hess Road, Pe­nal, and Anil Jagdin, of Clarke Road, Pe­nal were grant­ed bail as they ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore High Court Mas­ter Mar­garet Sookraj-Goswa­mi yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Venezue­lan na­tion­als Jose Miguel Pad­u­ani and Agustin An­to­nio Aguil­era, who were ar­rest­ed along­side the duo dur­ing an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion by sev­er­al law en­force­ment agen­cies led by the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) of the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty last week, were de­nied bail.

As part of their bail con­di­tions, Ram­per­sad and Jagdin were or­dered to re­port to the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion once week­ly un­til their cas­es are de­ter­mined.

Al­though me­dia per­son­nel were present for the hear­ing, they were asked to ex­it the vir­tu­al court­room as they made their ap­pear­ance, as the al­leged vic­tim in the case is a 14-year-old girl from Venezuela.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Ram­per­sad was slapped with three crim­i­nal charges—har­bour­ing a child for sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion, sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion of a child, and at­tempt­ed chok­ing.

The of­fences are al­leged to have tak­en place ear­li­er this year af­ter the vic­tim al­leged­ly ar­rived in T&T in Feb­ru­ary.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the CTU last week, the al­leged vic­tim re­port­ed the group af­ter she was safe­ly res­cued and placed un­der the pro­tec­tion and care of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.

In ad­di­tion to the men who ap­peared in court yes­ter­day ac­cused of hu­man traf­fick­ing, three Venezue­lan na­tion­als were al­so de­tained for im­mi­gra­tion vi­o­la­tions.

It said that the op­er­a­tion that led to their ar­rests was based on col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween sev­er­al units of T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

The re­lease quot­ed Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, who said, “This suc­cess demon­strates what is pos­si­ble when our agen­cies work to­geth­er with fo­cus and re­solve. The min­istry re­mains stead­fast in its mis­sion to dis­man­tle these crim­i­nal net­works and en­sure that T&T is nev­er a haven for hu­man traf­fick­ing.”

Re­mind­ing the pub­lic of the se­ri­ous­ness of hu­man traf­fick­ing, the re­lease said: “The CTU con­tin­ues to lead the na­tion­al fight against hu­man traf­fick­ing, pro­tect­ing vic­tims, pur­su­ing of­fend­ers, and strength­en­ing pre­ven­tion mea­sures across T&T.”

Po­lice pros­e­cu­tor Cpl Shel­don Salazar rep­re­sent­ed the State at the hear­ing.