‘Naukri ke liye aaya tha… Par mujhse scam karwa rahe the’: How 3 men escaped ‘cyber slavery’ in Cambodia

The email, which the Delhi Police converted into a complaint, was a sneak peek to the harrowing tale of Kumar and many other “cyber slaves” who were allegedly forced into executing cyber scams targeting Indians.

“Mujhse scam karwa rahe the (They were forcing me to be a part of a scam). I had come for a job, but we were kept like slaves. I got trapped,” Kumar, who hails from Haryana, told The Indian Express.

In the email, Kumar claimed he was “trafficked” to Cambodia by one Ali Khumeni on the pretext of a job. He, along with several others from India, allegedly fell prey to a scam and initially ended up in Dubai in March 2024.

Based on Kumar’s email, the IFSO unit of the Delhi Police Special Cell registered an FIR under Indian Penal Code and the Emigration Act. An investigation was launched and Khumeni was arrested last July.

According to the email, Khumeni, who had introduced himself as a recruiter for several foreign companies, had promised Kumar a data entry job in Dubai in lieu of Rs 40,000. Khumeni, who was in touch with Kumar on WhatsApp, sent him a ticket for a flight to Dubai on March 27, 2024.

“On reaching Dubai, I and many others received a seven-day training at a call centre in Cedar Park, Dubai Investment Park from a Chinese national. We were told not to leave the campus or talk to any outsider without the employers’ permission,” Kumar wrote.

He alleged that they soon realised that people at the call centre would target Indian nationals by calling them from UK-based mobile numbers. According to Kumar, the cyber scams were executed from a call centre run by Zhong Kang, a Chinese national.

Kumar claimed that when he refused to obey the orders of the operators, he was thrashed and threatened. In the email, Kumar wrote that their days at the centre ended with a “raid”, after which the workers were allegedly shifted overnight.

Kumar claimed they were taken to Bangkok on May 2, 2024, on an Emirates flight. “We were taken in company vehicles and after a six-hour drive, we reached a place near the Cambodian border — where they snatched our passports. We crossed the border on foot and were then taken to a big complex in Krong Poi Pet,” he said.

The complex, about a five-minute drive from the border, left him in shock as he found that “two companies were housed in the vicinity, with 600 Indians forced into the same job”.

Kumar said the employers would take away the passports of all who worked there. Guards would constantly monitor the workers to make sure nobody left the complex without permission.

According to Kumar, the inmates were treated as “slaves” and threatened that they would be “harmed” if they tried to escape. If anyone was caught attempting to escape, they would thrash the person in front of other workers to instill a sense of fear among every one, Kumar said in the email.

However, Kumar, Sodhi and Raman were desperate.

On July 15 last year, they stepped out for four hours — the only such window they used to get once a month — to buy daily supplies. They boarded a taxi, reached the Indian Embassy and narrated their ordeal. “We got several threatening messages to harm us and our family members,” Kumar said in the email.

However, soon after, he and the others, who were issued a white passport by the embassy, left for India.

Khumeni was traced to Meerut and was arrested in July 2024. During questioning, he admitted to working as an human resource (HR) official for a Chinese firm, which was involved in “frauds”. The chargesheet filed in the case revealed that a nexus of HR officials worked for the cyber fraud racket.

Police said multiple arrests were made in the case in 2024 and in early 2025. The scam is currently being probed under the supervision of DCP (IFSO) Vinit Kumar.

Kumar, who has since returned to Dubai, now works as a security guard. “I had to take the risk again. My wife and child rely on me,” he said.