About 30,000 yet to return from Southeast Asia, Punjab tops list

The Centre’s high-level inter-ministerial sheet has present directed each States and Union Territories (UTs) to behaviour ground-level verification and get details of these people, said sources. The panel, acceptable up successful May to look into the issue, had directed the migration section to compile the data.

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Immigration is learnt to person shared the information astatine a gathering 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, information experts of different agencies, and elder officials of States and UTs.

According to the information (see chart), too 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 instrumentality from Thailand, 6,242 from Vietnam, 2,271 from Cambodia, and 503 from Myanmar,” said a root successful the information 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 migration section has recovered 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 implicit 5,000 Indians were suspected to beryllium trapped successful Cambodia, allegedly held against their volition and forced to transportation retired cyber frauds. According to authorities estimates, Indians had been duped of astatine slightest Rs 500 crore successful the six months anterior to March this year.

The Centre had past acceptable up the inter-ministerial sheet to look into the contented and place the loopholes. The sheet is learnt to person identified gaps successful banking, migration and telecom sectors.

At the gathering earlier this month, the Bureau of Immigration was asked to make mechanisms to place Indian nationals who whitethorn beryllium imaginable victims of “cyber slavery”. The Ministry of Civil Aviation was besides asked to instrumentality measures to forestall further outflux of imaginable victims.

As reported by The Indian Express earlier, the victims are sent connected the pretext of information introduction jobs, and past forced to transportation retired cyber frauds. Speaking to The Indian Express, immoderate of the rescued men had said they were offered “lucrative” jobs by agents, and sent to these countries wherever their passports would beryllium taken away.

They were past employed by these “scamming companies”, wherever they had to make fake societal media accounts, utilizing photos of women, to lure radical to put successful a cryptocurrency app oregon fraud concern funds. As soon arsenic the targets invested, they would beryllium “ghosted” (all connection stopped suddenly) oregon “blocked”.

Analysis of information by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), a part of the MHA, had recovered an summation successful the fig of cyber crimes targeting Indians — astir 45 per cent were recovered to originate from the Southeast Asia region. Around 1 lakh cyber complaints person been registered with the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal since January 2023.