Lure of work abroad lands Indians in jail

The External Affairs Ministry puts the figure at 6,277 but admits that many nations haven't submitted the count, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 12, 2008, 03:52:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The dream of a job in a foreign land has gone sour for thousands of Indians, who are now languishing in foreign jails for travelling with false documents.

BS Ramoowalia, member of the National Commission for Minority Education Institutions, said that over 20,000 Indians, mostly from Punjab and southern states, were languishing in jails after being duped by travel agents.

Ramoowalia made this submission at the recently-concluded Pravasi Bharatiya Sammelan.

The India External Affairs Ministry puts the figure at 6,277 but admits that many countries have not submitted the count of Indians in jail.

Of these, the maximum 1,116 are in Saudi Arabia, followed by 825 in United Arab Emirates, 791 in Singapore, 655 in Pakistan and 545 in Malaysia.

The MEA's recent response to the Parliament says that most of those jailed in Singapore, Malaysia and other South-east Asian countries were held for violation of immigration laws.

Indians have been arrested in the Mediterranean countries like Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal for reaching there without proper documents, the MEA said.

In countries like the East European Slovak Republic, Czech Republic and Poland, about 160 Indians have been arrested in the last few years trying to sneak in without proper documents.

Romoowalia, who claims the figure is several thousand in these countries, says the families whose loved ones are missing, can give the government an exact picture.

Some recent cases show that the picture is much more grim that what the government is trying to show.

A group of 37 men from Kapurthala, who were promised jobs in European countries, is reported missing since November last year.

"Nobody knows whether they are in jail or have perished. Such incidents are rampant all over Punjab with over 500 illegal travel agents operating in the state," Ramoowalia said.

In November-December 2007, over 50 Punjabis were caught in France for travelling on fake documents. In one case about 30 people were found in "inhuman" conditions, packed in a container and being smuggled from the French Alps to Switzerland. In the second case, about 22 Punjabis, including children, were arrested while trying to cross the France border.

Romoowalia, a former Union Cabinet minister, wants the Central government to issue an appeal to people to report the cases of missing family members, who had gone to foreign countries looking for a job.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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