Mumbai: 2 agents arrested for sending youths into Myanmar job trap

MUMBAI: The crime branch has arrested two agents from the city in a case of kidnapping of three youths who were held captive in Myanmar after being lured to Thailand with a job offer. Unit 9 of the crime branch arrested Umar Kadar Chiruvattam and Salim alias Nawaz Khan, both recruitment agents from Dongri, on Saturday.
Over 70 people from the city and its vicinity are reportedly stuck in Myanmar, according to a complainant, but the police said so far they had information about only three persons.
The complainant, a youth from Dongri who was able to return from Myanmar after paying Rs 5 lakh to the gang there, said to the police that in August he was looking for a job and had come in contact with a person from Dubai called Yasir on social media. Yasir allegedly told him that there were job opportunities in Chinese digital marketing companies in Thailand and he could earn upwards of $1,000 per month.
The complainant submitted his bio-data and was told that he had been chosen for the job. Chiruvattam and Khan then took over, said the police. They said Khan introduced the complainant to Chiruvattam, who sent the youth to Thailand with the mobile number of a Chinese person called Feng. The complainant paid Rs 45,000 to the agents for their services.
In Thailand, Feng picked up the complainant and took him to an office where he saw many youngsters occupied with telemarketing.
"These youngsters were asked to lure people from the US, Canada and European countries to invest in crypto currencies. When the complainant learnt that it was a fraud company, he told them he did not want to work there, but Feng said that he should either complete his target of doing business worth $6,000 or pay Rs 5 lakh to leave. He was taken to an unknown place and kept under hostile conditions," an officer said.
The police said the arrested agents very well knew they were sending their clients into a trap and yet for monetary considerations they sent three youths from the city to Thailand and then on to Myanmar.
The complainant in the case told the police that as he needed Rs 5 lakh to buy his freedom, the first thing he did was to inform his parents in the city about his requirement. The parents arranged the Rs 5 lakh and paid it to Chiruvattam and Khan.
DCP Sangramsingh Nishandar said that the crime branch had taken two FIRs in the case - one in Dongri and one in Bandra - and clubbed them together. He said that the police had booked the accused under the relevant sections of the IPC for cheating, forgery, breach of trust, kidnapping, wrongful confinement, extortion, criminal intimidation, and criminal conspiracy.