We were held captive...life was worse than animals

As many as 64 fake job scam victims from Uttar Pradesh, who were freed from the clutches of the digital arrest gang in Myanmar, narrated their tale of woes, saying their condition was similar to what was portrayed in the recent movie 'The Goat Life', the storyline of which essays the true tale of an Indian migrant worker, Najeeb Muhammad, whose life took a nightmarish turn in the unforgiving sands of Saudi Arabia.

- Aakash Ghosh

LUCKNOW:

The Indian government on Monday and Tuesday brought home 549 of its nationals who were lured to various southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, with fake job offers and made to engage in cybercrime and other fraudulent activities in scam compounds. They were brought to India by the Air Force's C-17 aircraft.

Of these Indians who returned from Myanmar, 64 were residents of UP, said Amitabh Yash, ADG (law and order).

Victims from UP were brought to Lucknow late on Tuesday evening. After arriving in a special bus from Delhi, they were interrogated at Charbagh by Local Intelligence Unit (LIU) officials, said police.

The district administration released a list of youths from Lucknow that includes Mohd Anas, Aman Singh, Vipin Yadav, Sultan Saldhuddi Rabbani and Tauseef. Indian nationals from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh had been lured to either Thailand or Myanmar with false promises of jobs in the IT sector.

They were then trafficked to cyber crime centres, mostly run by Chinese criminal gangs.

'They stopped paying our salaries'