Today at least 47 Indians who were kidnapped and held against their own will to carry out online scams against Indians in Laos were rescued by officials. Recently the Indian government has advised people not to accept fake job offers from Laos and Cambodia that may be running online fraud activities. Till now 635 Indians have been evacuated from such situations.
Latest among them was the rescue by the Indian Embassy in Laos, which managed to rescue 47 Indians stuck in cyber scam centers at the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Bokeo province. Out of which 29 were surrendered by the Lao authorities when they have conducted crackdown operation against the illegitimate activities while 18 have directly come to the embassy seeking for help as mentioned in a statement posted on X (originally tweet).
The rescue comes after S. Jaishankar external affairs minister for India has had a meeting with the Laos Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone over human trafficking issue. The usual pattern is to recruit Indians on under the pretext of employment opportunity in Laos and then hold their passports. They are making victims open and create fakes profiles on social networks, as women; they then defraud their targets as part of their day’s ‘work’ or else face punishment. Most of the fraudsters would pretend to be women on the dating platforms with the aim of duping potential targets into falling victims to cryptocurrency related cons. They deprived food and sleep on their employees who were not able to achieve targets. Similarly, last month the embassy had also helped 13 Indian nationals in similar circumstances.
