Cyber slavery has entrapped thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of Indians in Southeast Asia, where they’re forced to work for online scammers targetting Indians at home and defrauding millions of dollars from them. Now the Indian government is cracking down on this new cyber crime.
Measures taken by the country’s telecom ministry include disconnecting 21.7 million mobile phone connections as well as blocking some 226,000 handsets.
Watch: Financial fraud top cybercrime in India
An inter-ministerial panel has been set up, which includes the Home Ministry, Immigration Bureau, Financial Intelligence Unit, Reserve Bank of India, Information Technology Ministry, and National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Telecom operators have been asked to block incoming international “spoofed calls” that display Indian mobile numbers. Such dropped calls form 35 per cent of the incoming international calls.
The telecom firms are also told to give data on Indian mobile numbers using roaming facilities in Hong Kong, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines and Myanmar, The Indian Express said in a report on Monday (Sep 30).
It quoted a source as saying that 600,000 such phones were roaming in the Southeast Asia region in April-June this year.
Could tens of thousands of Indians be working for foreign cyber fraud companies?
Meanwhile, government data shows that 29,466 of the 73,138 Indians who travelled to Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam on visitor visas from January 2022 to May 2024 are yet to return.
The inter-ministerial panel has asked local governments in India to carry out thorough verifications about their backgrounds and whereabouts.
They predominantly hail from the states of Punjab (3,667), Maharashtra (3,233) and Tamil Nadu (3,124), said an Indian Express report.
Nearly 70 per cent of the ‘disappeared’ people had gone to Thailand from India.
Cyber slavery: 5,000 Indians are trapped in Cambodia
According to earlier Indian media reports, at least 5,000 Indians were trapped in Cambodia, the main centre of cyber slavery in Southeast Asia. Many of them had gone there thinking they were joining legitimate firms but were forced to engage in various cyber crimes.
Many of these crimes target Indians back home, often extorting money to the tune of more than 5 billion rupees.
According to Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre data, 45 per cent of cyber crimes targeting Indians originate in Southeast Asia. Around 100,000 complaints have been registered with the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal since January 2023.
There have been several reports this year about Indians complaining about being trapped in Southeast Asian countries, being held against their will, or being rescued by government agencies.
In May, the government reported that 360 Indians working as cyber slaves in Cambodia were repatriated in the previous five months.
In August, it was reported that more than 1,000 people from the southern state of Tamil Nadu who went to Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos were possibly working as cyber slaves. Other origin states include Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi.
In the same month, 47 Indians who were forced to run dating app scams were rescued in Laos.
Hundreds of them have been rescued so far by the Indian government or international organisations and NGOs.
What is cyber slavery?
According to the CyberPeace Foundation, cyber slavery is a modern form of slavery “that begins with online deception and evolves into physical human trafficking.”
“It can take many different forms, such as coercive involvement in cybercrime, forced employment in online frauds, exploitation in the gig economy, or involuntary slavery.”
Indians were ‘selected’ for high-paying jobs, only to be forced to work 16 hours a day under severe conditions.
The illegal online work they are forced into includes money laundering, cryptocurrency fraud and dating/ love scams.
Cyber slavery modus operandi
According to Indian media reports, Indians from various states aged in their 20s and 30s are lured by cyber criminals for data entry jobs. Once they land in countries like Cambodia and Laos, their passports are taken away by these companies and then they are forced to make cyberfraud calls, mainly targeting Indians back home.
Many of these calls involve the online equivalent of honey trapping. The scammers ask the Indians to create fake social media profiles of women. The frauds range from cryptocurrency investments to dating.
Once the victims deposit money, they are ghosted and their numbers blocked.
(With inputs from agencies)
