UP men booked for fake visas: Arrest of victims of fraud who acted in good faith is an abomination

Arresting the thirty men from Uttar Pradesh for trying to leave the country on false visas and tickets seems excessive and harsh. These are just simple, poverty-hit people, with no chance of getting a job at home, who get duped into going to the Gulf, where they think the roads are paved with gold. That makes them easy prey for conmen posing as recruiting agents. Instead of arresting these men on charges of cheating and forgery, they should be released and co-opted in prosecuting the real crooks. In this situation, these would be the people who took Rs 100,000 from each of these guys and fooled them into going to the Mumbai airport. This is nothing new and reams have been written about these unscrupulous recruitment agents and their exploitative cold-bloodedness. This is only one element in the rackets that operate on the ‘go to the Gulf’ platform. The value of Indian passports also escalates on the black market if you have a generic name like Singh or Kumar and if you have a beard or a turban. [caption id=“attachment_4189449” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] The value doubles for those with US and UK visas, although the electronic scanner systems have curbed this underground swindle in recent times. There is human trafficking, there are narcotics and contraband routes, money laundering, even active marriage ‘bureaus’ and a slew of false job promises that have no authenticity. Discovering stolen passports, rubber stamps and other documents in some seedy hotel room is commonplace in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telengana. Hyderabad is the centre of these deceits. Does anyone realise how much agony these men have faced, besides leaving their loved ones? They would have taken loans at usurious prices and interest rates, probably adding to the burden of pre-existing loans. These loans would have prompted them to seek these jobs abroad in the hope of clearing their family debts. Contrary to the romantic hype that is associated with going abroad, the large majority of the labour force is steeped in in that incredible and singular word ‘majboori’ (roughly translated as compulsion). People go abroad for getting back the land given as surety, for building a house, for getting a sister married, for paying for medical treatment for a loved one and such other reasons. The word ‘majboori’  is integral to the Indian ethos. Keeping that in mind, these people are evidence that successive governments have failed them and left them no choice but to be victims of these frauds. Such activities are usually allowed to operate with the tacit agreement of some authority. To lock them up is a cruel joke. They should be released immediately and the Protectorate General of Emigrants must step in at once, because this is also part of its purview. Where is the genuine concern when you lock up people who are in shock and whose only error is they dealt in good faith with the scamsters. In 2016, over 50 Indians from Tamil Nadu and UP arrived in the UAE on visit visas thinking they had jobs. There were none, prompting the Indian Consul General to issue a directive warning to job seekers not to fetch up on visit visas. The Indian mission issued 225 free tickets to send people home last year. The new menace is fake websites offering jobs in the Gulf countries and they feed from the 29,500 jobless who enter the unemployed fray every day having attained adulthood. That’s just over a million people a year. For the less affluent Indians, going abroad does not mean a business class seat and a gourmet meal, and posts about the journey on Facebook. Job seekers, already in debt over getting their passport and visa and paying for the air ticket, arrive to discover that the reality is wildly different from the promise. Then, they have to pay one month’s salary as gratuity to agents who brought them there. With this ground reality, even one more hour in jail against these 30 men is an abomination.