DEHRADUN: Close to 60 men from Nepal have in recent days been rescued from months-long captivity by teams comprising officials in India, staff from the Nepal embassy and NGO workers after the youth – many of them minors – were trafficked into UP, Uttarakhand and Bihar by shady job networks. Those in the know say there could be “at least a thousand others”.Nepal’s ambassador to India, Shankar P Sharma, told TOI on Thursday: “Kathmandu has issued an advisory to citizens to be cautious before taking job offers in India. We have received full cooperation from Indian agencies in the rescue of our citizens.” His remarks came amid widening investigations in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, where similar rackets are suspected to be operating with impunity.Echoing the state’s stance, Uttarakhand home secretary Shailesh Bagauli told TOI, “Uttarakhand govt has always offered full cooperation to neighbouring countries like Nepal in such cases, and will continue to do so. We will take all necessary actions to ensure that such crimes are not committed in our state in future.”In the past week alone, 57 Nepalese nationals – 12 of them minors – were rescued from two towns in Uttarakhand. They had been confined in ordinary-looking homes in Rudrapur and Kashipur by a syndicate that police say operates under the guise of a marketing firm. The youths had been lured with promises of jobs, then confined, beaten and forced to recruit others into the same racket.The rescues were carried out by Uttarakhand police in collaboration with the Nepal embassy and KIN India, a group of Nepalese social workers based in Delhi who work on cases related to human trafficking. The chain of events had begun when one young man escaped captivity in Kashipur and alerted police in Nepal.
