A number of Indian workers, who recently returned from Libya, claimed that they had been sold by their agents for $3,000 dollars each, according to the Indian Express newspaper.
The allegations came after a 33-year-old Indian girl alleged in a video last month, that an Indian-based agent had promised to get her a domestic worker’s job in Dubai. Instead, he had sold her to a person for around $3,600.
The youths claimed that after being sold, they were kept as hostages inside a company, and were made to work like slaves.
They also thanked the Ministry of External Affairs of India, who they claimed intervened at the right time and helped bring them back home.
The youths had gone to work as labourers at a cement factory located in Benghazi, Libya. However, soon after reaching Libya, they found that they had been sold to the factory by their agent.
They claimed that they were forced to work for over 18 hours, sometimes without even food or water.
“I was shocked after reaching Libya. There was no place for us to stay. We did not have anything to eat,” said Gurpreet Singh.
“We were forced to survive on stale food for many days, and the company we worked for did not pay us any money,” Gurpreet noted, adding that anyone who opposed was beaten up.
“When we said that we wanted to go back to India, we were told by company officials that we had been sold to them for $3,000 each. We needed to pay them the $3,000 each for our freedom,” he said.
Last month, four Pakistani migrants were reportedly kidnapped by human traffickers in Libya, their families told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper.
The kidnappers asked for a ransom of 5.6 million Rupees to be paid for their safe release. The abductees are Aamir Hayat, Waleed Khan, Bilal Khan and Afzal Junaid, aged between 22 to 25 years.