To hell & back: Indian embassy evacuates 3 UP men forced into bonded labour in Malaysia

FAIZABAD: Four months before the lockdown was clamped, three youths from Uttar Pradesh were lured by an illegal overseas recruitment agency with a network straddling Mumbai and Hyderabad and flown to Malaysia, where they were starved and brutally tortured by a Pakistani contractor till they send an SOS to the Indian embassy in Kuala Lumpur. They wriggled out of their hellhole and took shelter in the Indian embassy premises to be finally evacuated by a Vande Bharat flight four days ago.The trio took a bus home after touching down in Delhi on June 9.
This was possible only after the intervention of the Indian embassy officials, ministry of external affairs and social activist Sayyad Abid Hussain, who works relentlessly for release of Indian citizens trapped abroad.
This traumatic story is about three men from Ambedkarnagar district, Mahmood Aalam, Jaane Alam and Ainul Huda, who were sent on a tourist visa and then forced into bonded labour in a plywood factory in Malaysia. Their passports were seized by a Pakistani contractor, Abdul Qadir, repeatedly thrashed with hot iron rods, denied salary and often left to starve. The torture would increase whenever they spoke about returning to India or demanded their passports. Their bodies bear telltale sign of physical assault.
Narrating his ordeal to TOI, Mahmood Aalam, resident of Lolpur village in Akbarpur tehsil of Ambedkar Nagar district said, “A manpower agent in Mumbai, Shamshaad Ansari, took Rs 70,000 each from us with promise of a work permit and job in Malaysia. After we paid up, he sent us on a 15-day tourist visa with an assurance that when we reached Malaysia, their Hyderabadi agent would hand over a work permit. But when we reached Malaysia on December 16 last year, we were handed over to a Pakistani agent, Abdul Qadir. He took our passports for a visa stamp. Neither did he return our passports nor did we get a work permit. Instead he inflicted inhuman torture.”
It was gruelling work at the factory and when one of them, Ainul Haq, 50, suffered a heart attack and collapsed in the premises, he was sacked and not provided medical aid. Seeing their plight, another Indian worker secretly gave them the number of social activist, Abid Hussain.
Talking to TOI, Sayyad Abid Hussain, said, “When I received a call from them, I contacted the ministry of external affairs and Indian embassy in Malaysia, who acted promptly and traced them. The Pakistani agent was promised more money in lieu of the passports. He relented with threats of burning them alive if they didn’t pay up Rs 80,000 extra. A day later, they took shelter in the embassy. But by then flights were cancelled due to the pandemic-triggered lockdown.”
They spend two months at the embassy campus and were provided food, medical aid and finally sent back to India on June 9. “This is not just our story. There are hundreds of Indian youths trapped in Malaysia for ten years and facing starvation and torture,” said Mahmood.