Shal­iza Has­sanali

In­di­an na­tion­als Di­nesh Chand Jatav, Jagdish Mali and Bab­u­lal Jatav-who claimed they were vic­tims of a hu­man traf­fick­ing ring in Trinidad-will fi­nal­ly leave T&T shores next Sun­day.Al­though the men were giv­en air­line tick­ets by the In­dia High Com­mis­sion last Wednes­day, Man­ju Ver­ma who un­earthed the traf­fick­ing ring, said she was not sat­is­fied with the num­ber of con­nect­ing flights the men would have been sub­ject­ed to and was in the process of hav­ing it changed to a lat­er date.The orig­i­nal flight would have tak­en be­tween three to fours days.

Ver­ma said hope­ful­ly by next Sun­day the men would de­part Trinidad and with­in 33 hours they would be re­unit­ed with their fam­i­lies in Jaipur, In­dia.The busi­ness­man be­hind the ring met with In­dia High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T Malay Mishra hours af­ter the Sun­day Guardian high­light­ed the plight of the three men, agree­ing to pay each $15,000 com­pen­sa­tion, as well as cov­er the cost of their air­line tick­ets.Their pass­ports were al­so re­turned to them.The men col­lect­ed their com­pen­sa­tion last Wednes­day at the High Com­mis­sion's of­fice in the pres­ence of Mishra.

On No­vem­ber 17, 2009, the men came to Trinidad af­ter ap­ply­ing for a po­si­tion ad­ver­tised in one of In­dia's news­pa­pers seek­ing skilled males in gran­ite and mar­ble fab­ri­ca­tion.The ad­ver­tise­ment was placed in the news­pa­per by a rel­a­tive of the lo­cal busi­ness­man.The men were ac­cept­ed and of­fered $2,700 month­ly, plus a $3,500 apart­ment which the busi­ness­man promised to pay for un­til their con­tract and work per­mits ex­pired in 2012.How­ev­er, up­on their ar­rival in Trinidad, the busi­ness­man seized their pass­ports as well as ex­ploit­ed, threat­ened and abused them.Ver­ma said the men were duped and ex­ploit­ed for the past 17 months in a hu­man traf­fick­ing ring un­til she in­ter­vened and plead­ed with the au­thor­i­ties for the men to re­turn home.

So far, Ver­ma said Im­mi­gra­tion has in­ter­vened to en­sure that the men re­turn home safe­ly.Ver­ma was giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to look af­ter the men un­til they de­part. She said Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sub­has Pan­day was ex­pect­ed to meet with Mishra next week.Touched by an out­pour­ing of love from T&T cit­i­zens for the men, Ver­ma said: "These guys have promised to re­turn one day. Peo­ple have of­fered them jobs. I am re­al­ly hap­py that things have worked out and I must thank the Sun­day Guardian for in­ter­ven­ing. Jus­tice has been done."