Indian job seekers duped into joining Russian army

New Delhi uncovers human trafficking ring which spans several cities in India

- Nirmala Ganapathy

In the last series of voice messages that Mr Azad Ahmed sent his brother Sajid, he described how he was being made to dig trenches somewhere on the front lines of the Ukraine war.

The 31-year-old is among 35 Indians who, in their search for jobs, were duped and trafficked to Russia and conscripted into the Russian army to fight the war in Ukraine. They are just the ones Indian federal investigators have identified.

Two are known to have died in recent weeks, which has deepened the sense of alarm in Mr Azad's family.

"My mother has gone into depression. I don't know what to say to her," said Mr Sajid, 33, adding that he still cannot believe that a faraway war he read about in the newspaper now has a grip on their lives in Kashmir.

He said his brother, who is married and has a two-month-old baby, had failed to get suitable employment since his return from Saudi Arabia three years ago, where he worked in accounting in an export-import house.

Mr Azad chanced upon the Baba Vlogs YouTube channel run by a Dubai-based man called Faisal Khan. The man charged him 300,000 rupees (S$4,840) to get what was supposed to be a cooking and cleaning job in Dubai, and Mr Azad left Kashmir on Dec 25.

"In Dubai, he was told that there were no jobs there, but there were jobs in Moscow. So he and 12 people went to Russia," said Mr Sajid, who runs a business digging borewells.

Once they landed in Russia, the group's phones were confiscated, and they were forced to sign a contract in Russian to get the phones back. They were then sent for 15 days of military training before being dispatched to the front line, said his brother.