Vaishali’s Mohammed Arshad, 34, regrets not being able to attend the burial of his father-in-law Md Kamaal, 56, a small-time tobacco seller who died of a heart attack at his Howrah residence in Kolkata last May.
Trapped in Laos in ‘cyber slavery’, the new job con, an organised crime of scamming people through digital means, Arshad could not even participate in the ‘Quran Khawani’ — the reading of verses from the sacred Quran — on his father-in-law’s ‘Chaliswan’, the 40th day of death, considered a significant period among Muslims when family and friends gather to pray for the deceased soul, marking the end of the formal mourning period.
“My Chinese employers at Rehani Technology in Laos around the ‘Golden Triangle’ had taken my passport and refused to return it till I paid them ₹10 lakh or worked there for one year,” said Arshad.
A discreet SOS email to the Indian embassy in Laos saved Arshad, as he was among the 64 from Bihar rescued by the Ministry of External Affairs last year from ‘cyber slavery’ around the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (GTSEZ), which includes parts of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, centered on the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers, known as the largest opium-producing areas of the world.
The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre, commonly referred to as I4C, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, had in June last year shared with the state police a list of 347 from Bihar who had gone on tourist/visitor visas to southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, since 2022, but had not returned yet. Most of them are now believed to have fallen prey to ‘cyber slavery’, where victims are allegedly coerced into conducting cyber fraud and other illegal activities under the threat of violence and harassment.
“We are verifying all such cases and trying to find out through the families of such individuals if they have been trapped in those countries,” said Sunil Kumar, additional-director general of police, heading the economic offences unit (EOU), which deals with cybercrime in Bihar.
“One case has been lodged in Gopalganj in connection with cyber slavery by an individual rescued from southeast Asia. The accused is on the run, but the Gopalganj police are actively pursuing the case. We have asked the district police to record the statements of all such victims. The police are also helping victims of cyber slavery who are willing to come forward and lodge complaints against people who cheated them. Further investigations are on,” said Kumar.
Investigations were on in two other cases in which the accused involved in duping victims of ‘cyber slavery’ were on the run, said another senior police officer, requesting anonymity.
Interestingly, those involved in duping people from Bihar had lured them mostly through social media channels with international job offers to the southeast Asian countries. They do not have any registered recruitment agency or office, but are fly-by-night operators, who are absconding.
None of the 64 Biharis rescued from cyber slavery in southeast Asian countries had gone through the registered recruiting agents (RAs) under the Protector of Emigrants (PoE) of the Ministry of External Affairs, said officials. There are 26 RAs in Bihar out of the 2,164 in India on the eMigrate portal till December 8, 2024.
Asked about the slow progress in the case, a third police officer said, “Many victims of cyber slavery have gone outside the state in search of job, while some others are reluctant to lodge police complaints. Only one complaint has been lodged in Gopalganj in connection with cyber slavery.”
Arshad, for instance, had not lodged a police case.
“I don’t want to lodge any police complaint and then keep making rounds of the police station, as the cops keep calling for some reason or the other. I’m already working and want to concentrate on my new job,” said Arshad.
THE TRAP
Arshad was earning ₹28,000 monthly as a BPO (business process outsourcing) trainer at Empower Pragati, a private firm in Ghaziabad, working for the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship when the greed for money and the desire to work abroad got the better of him.
“I saw an advertisement on Instagram, calling applicants for a call centre job in Dubai, with a monthly salary of ₹80,000. On reaching the consultancy firm at Gurugram, mentioned in the advertisement. I was told that the Dubai call centre vacancy was closed, but there was a similar opening at a BPO in Laos for which I had to make a one-time payment of ₹2 lakh after an initial registration amount of ₹2,000. I was asked to share a video clip, giving my introduction in English, that I did. The same afternoon, I got a call confirming my selection for the job,” said Arshad.
“I borrowed money from a private money lender, my brother-in-law and my elder brother Md Azam, who took a loan against his credit card for me to pay the consultancy firm. I was then provided air tickets to fly from Kolkata to Bangkok and from Bangkok to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, the same day on March 1 last year. The next day, I had to undertake a seven-hour train journey from Vientiane to Nateuy then a five-hour cab drive to Bokeo, the smallest and second least populous northern province of Laos, followed by a 10–15-minute boat ride to the Golden Triangle before I met my tour coordinator Nitish Ankit Shaukeen, who till this time was talking to me on phone. He then took me to my Chinese employers. I didn’t realise then that I had walked into a trap,” he added.
MODUS OPERANDI
The employers, said Arshad, were good initially, as they provided him with free board and lodging arrangement on a shared basis, and gave him a 150-page script on how to sweet chat online on Facebook and Instagram.
“Though my role was to get investment in cryptocurrency, I soon realised I was expected to weave a honey trap, using fake IDs and photographs of girls on FB and Insta to befriend US nationals or NRIs in the US and bring them from texting on FB or Insta to WhatsApp, where we could share links and ask them to download mobile app for investing in cryptocurrency. To win the trust of clients, the company would initially give them good returns on small investment, but block withdrawal of any heavy amount they would subsequently invest through the firm’s specially designed mobile app. For those who insisted on video call, we had girls in the team, trained to go to any extent to trap clients, and then blackmail them,” explained Arshad.
“As soon as I realised my job profile, I was least interested in it, but other Indians, trapped there, told me about the peril of opting out. They would spank reluctant workers with rods, pass current, deprive them of meals and even make them climb in 7-10 minutes the 21-storied building where the office was in till they ran out of steam. Those who wanted their passports back, were asked to pay up to ₹10 lakh, and stripped of their company ID (identity card), thus depriving them of the free meal admissible to them,” recollected Arshad.
Arshad is lucky to have a job with an international development agency in Bihar’s Purnia district since last October. However, many others are not as lucky as Arshad, as they remain unemployed and struggle to eke out a living after being rescued.
DUPED INTO PENURY
Saddled by the burden of debt taken to pay off their agents for a data entry operator’s job in Bangkok, Santosh Kumar, 27, and Nitish Kumar Patel, 24, now shy away from private moneylenders from whom they borrowed money. Having returned to their village Karanpura in Gopalganj district after being rescued by the Indian government from Laos, they struggle to make their ends meet.
A father of three children, after his marriage in 2018 to Meera Kumari, a homemaker, Kumar, son of a postman, was driven by poverty to apply for a computer operator’s job in Bangkok through agents Sufian Khan and Rahul Kumar Singh, who he claimed charged him ₹1.10 lakh.
His friend, Patel, too was drawn into cyber slavery. A bachelor, whose father is a factory worker in Delhi, Patel had to sell his motorbike for ₹50,000 and also borrow money from a private moneylender to pay his agents for the job in Bangkok.
“After the transfer of money to the Indian agents, they handed us over to a Pakistani handler, Avi, presumably using a pseudonym, who guided us over phone after we landed in Bangkok. We were then told to check into a lodge and take a bus ride the next day and then a short boat trip to the Golden Triangle where we came across Chinese handlers, who took us to a firm claiming to deal in cryptocurrency, but was into scamming,” said Kumar.
Kumar’s script about the firm’s modus operandi was the same as shared by Arshad. However, Kumar and Patel claimed they were harassed by their Chinese employers, as they confiscated the identity card issued by the company, depriving the duo of free on-campus meals, soon after the two asked for their passport and told their employers that they wanted to return to India.
Notably, their act of rescue was also like Arshad’s, after Kumar sent a distress email narrating the sequence of events to the Indian embassy in Laos and one “Shrikant Sir” (security assistant in the Indian embassy) helped them walk out of the vicious trap and return to India on March 24-25 last year, after a month in “captivity”.
Dashrath Chauhan, 28, from Siwan was another such victim who was swapped for the freedom of another “cyber slave” from Laos. He claimed to have been duped by one Vishal Kumar Yadav of Ziradei in Siwan. Reminiscing his 45-day ordeal at the Golden Triangle between April 2 and May 17 last year, he rued the fact that Yadav was still free despite Chauhan having shared Yadav’s mobile number with the local police in a formal complaint against him.
“I have lodged a complaint with the police against Vishal Yadav, and have shared his mobile number with the cops, but he’s still scot-free. I don’t stay at my village in Nepura under Dumrahar post office of Darauli police station because private moneylenders, I borrowed money from for a computer operator’s job at Bangkok, are after my life after I was rescued from Laos,” said Chauhan.
These are just a few examples of those rescued from cyber slavery from the Golden Triangle. The Bihar Police fear there could be many more as they verify 347 missing cases of people having gone to southeast Asian countries on tourist visa.
Of the 64 from Bihar rescued from cyber slavery through the efforts of the Indian government, 27 are from Katihar, 9 from Gopalganj, 7 from Saran, 4 from Madhubani, 2 each from Siwan, Begusarai, Vaishali, East Champaran, West Champaran (Bettiah and Bagaha) and Buxar, while one each are from Patna, Khagaria, Gaya, Bhojpur and Darbhanga, as per the details shared with the Bihar Police by the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre under the ministry of home affairs.
GOVT ACTION
As many as 29,466 of the 73,138 Indians who travelled to Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam on tourist/visitor visas between January 2022 and May 2024, have not returned, as per government data, compiled by the Bureau of Immigration under the Ministry of Home Affairs, said Surya Prakash, deputy director general (security) of the department of telecommunications (DoT), Bihar and Jharkhand, while referring to the growing menace of cyber fraud.
Notably, more than half (17,115) of these individuals are aged between 20 and 39 years, with males making up the majority (21,182).
So far, 1,167 Indians had been rescued from Cambodia, 924 from Lao PDR and 497 from Myanmar, as per information sourced from the Ministry of External Affairs and those in response to questions in the parliament.
“The government is aware of instances where dubious firms involved in fake recruitment job offers have lured Indian nationals mostly through social media channels to the southeast Asian countries and made them to carry out cybercrime and other illegal activities from scam centres operating in these countries. The exact number of Indian nationals stuck in these countries is not known as Indian nationals reach these scam centres on their own violation through fraudulent/unscrupulous recruitment agents/agencies and through illegal channels,” said Kirti Vardhan Singh, minister of state in the MEA, on November 28 last year, in response to a question on the states of repatriation of Indians from southeast Asia in the Rajya Sabha.
Cybercrime has grown and so have their complaints. A total 40,180 complaints of online financial fraud were reported to the economic offences unit (EOU) of the Bihar Police in 2023, which increased to 67,380 in 2024, said ADG Kumar.
The DoT has acted on complaints reported on its Sanchar Saathi and the Chakshu mobile application for cyber fraud related calls and SMSes.
“We have so far blocked 186 bulk SMS senders, 12.38 lakh WhatsApp accounts, 1.31 lakh SMS templates and short codes and blacklisted 71,000 SIM sellers since July 2023,” said Babu Ram, additional director-general, DoT, Bihar and Jharkhand.
The total amount of money swindled in financial fraud has also grown from 240.21 crore in 2023 to 429.83 crore in 2024.
Complaints of financial frauds, individually amounting to ₹50 lakh and above, have grown from two, amounting to ₹1,35,13,312 in 2022, to 49, amounting to ₹45,81,46,079 in 2024. Three such complaints, totaling ₹2,67,78,047 have already been reported in January this year with the cyber cell of the Bihar Police.
This, however, could just be the tip of the iceberg, as many cases go unreported.
