Amid ‘cyber slavery’ reports, about 30,000 Indians yet to return from Southeast Asia; Punjab tops list

The Centre’s high-level inter-ministerial panel has now directed all States and Union Territories (UTs) to conduct ground-level verification and get details of these people, said sources. The panel, set up in May to look into the issue, had directed the immigration department to compile the data.

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Immigration is learnt to have shared the data at a meeting held by the MHA with officials of the telecom department, Financial Intelligence Unit, Reserve Bank of India, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, NIA, CBI, security experts of other agencies, and senior officials of States and UTs.

Take a look at the state-wise data

According to the data (see chart), besides Punjab, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, 2,946 are from Uttar Pradesh, 2,659 from Kerala, 2,140 from Delhi, 2,068 from Gujarat, 1,928 from Haryana, 1,200 from Karnataka, 1,169 from Telangana and 1,041 from Rajasthan.

Among the rest, 675 are from Uttarakhand, 609 from West Bengal, 602 from Andhra Pradesh, 419 from Madhya Pradesh, 348 from Bihar, 263 from Jammu and Kashmir, 187 from Himachal Pradesh, 132 from Chandigarh, 126 from Odisha, 124 from Jharkhand, 115 from Goa, 92 from Assam, 73 from Chhattisgarh, 39 from Puducherry, 38 from Manipur, 33 from Nagaland, 22 from Ladakh, 20 from Sikkim, 18 from Meghalaya, 14 from Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Daman and Diu, 14 from Mizoram, 12 from Tripura, 6 from Arunachal Pradesh, 4 from Andaman & Nicobar Islands, and 2 from Lakshadweep.

“Among the 29,466 unreturned passengers, 21,182 are males. Of the total, 20,450 did not return from Thailand, 6,242 from Vietnam, 2,271 from Cambodia, and 503 from Myanmar,” said a source in the security establishment.

“The age-wise break-up shows that 8,777 are aged 20-29 years; 8,338 are aged 30-39 years; 4,819 are 40-49 years; 2,436 are 50-59 years; 1,896 are 10-19 years; 1,543 are 0-9 years; 1,189 are 60-69 years; 399 are 70-79 years; 60 are 80-89 years; and 9 are 90-99 years,” said the source.

According to the district-wise data, 1,017 are from Mumbai Suburban, 784 from Gorakhpur, 700 from Bengaluru Urban, 585 from Ahmedabad, 561 from Ludhiana, 523 from Pune, 483 from Thane, 455 from Chennai, 440 from Jalandhar and 425 from Hyderabad.

The immigration department has found that 12,493 went from Delhi airport, 4,699 from Mumbai, 2,395 from Kolkata, 2,296 from Kochi, 2,099 from Chennai, 1,911 from Bengaluru, and 1,577 from Hyderabad.

On March 28, The Indian Express had reported that over 5,000 Indians were suspected to be trapped in Cambodia, allegedly held against their will and forced to carry out cyber frauds. According to government estimates, Indians had been duped of at least Rs 500 crore in the six months prior to March this year.

The Centre had then set up the inter-ministerial panel to look into the issue and identify the loopholes. The panel is learnt to have identified gaps in banking, immigration and telecom sectors.

At the meeting earlier this month, the Bureau of Immigration was asked to develop mechanisms to identify Indian nationals who may be potential victims of “cyber slavery”. The Ministry of Civil Aviation was also asked to implement measures to prevent further outflux of potential victims.

As reported by The Indian Express earlier, the victims are sent on the pretext of data entry jobs, and then forced to carry out cyber frauds. Speaking to The Indian Express, some of the rescued men had said they were offered “lucrative” jobs by agents, and sent to these countries where their passports would be taken away.

They were then employed by these “scamming companies”, where they had to create fake social media accounts, using photos of women, to lure people to invest in a cryptocurrency app or fraud investment funds. As soon as the targets invested, they would be “ghosted” (all communication stopped suddenly) or “blocked”.

Analysis of data by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), a division of the MHA, had found an increase in the number of cyber crimes targeting Indians — about 45 per cent were found to originate from the Southeast Asia region. Around 1 lakh cyber complaints have been registered with the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal since January 2023.