Duped,30 Indians stranded in Kabul

Around 200 stranded men were crowded into the Karte Parwan Gurdwara,the centre of Afghanistans small Sikh community,last month. Many flew home after their families scraped funds for flights and travel documents,but over 30 are still stuck.

Mumbai native Subhedar Khandu is one of them. He said he paid Rs 1.5 lakh to an agent who promised he would earn a little over Rs 36,000 a month doing construction in Afghanistan.

I took out a loan to pay the agent,who I met in Mumbai. I thought I would get a one-year contact, Khandu said.

Instead,when he arrived in November,he was locked up in a house with other labourers,given only one meal per day and no work or salary. When his visa expired a month later,the agent vanished and the men turned to their embassy in desperation.

A mix of men from Rajasthan,Maharashtra,Andhra Pradesh and other states now spend most of the day dozing under blankets waiting for rescue.

Contractors supplying foreign troops,who have been fighting in Afghanistan for over eight years,often rely on foreign migrant workers for menial but comparatively well-paid jobs in construction,food preparation and other fields.

Many of those stranded had been transferred from Dubai,a popular destination for poor Indians who often pay hefty fees to secure work earning much more than they could at home.

About six months earlier,we had stray cases of Indians sent by unscrupulous agents to Afghanistan from Gulf countries,mainly from Dubai,on the false promise of remunerative employment, the Indian embassy in Kabul said in a statement. This trickle suddenly turned to a veritable flood,including also some cases of use of fraudulent visas, the statement added.

The embassy is helping cover the costs of feeding the men,and has also sent doctors to check their health,but declined to give an overall total of the number affected.