Nine months after his return, Jignesh (name changed to protect privacy) still wakes up thinking he’s in the compound. The 23-year-old son of a security guard from Ahmedabad had set out for Bangkok on December 8, 2024, for what he was told was a call-centre job. He believed he was joining a growing stream of young Indians seeking work abroad, hoping to earn enough to give their families a better life.
Slave compounds in Myanmar, adjoining regions are hubs for execution of digital arrest frauds: CBI
Instead, he was trafficked into Myanmar, labelled an illegal immigrant, and forced into a sprawling cyber-slavery network that has turned thousands of Indian jobseekers into unwilling cogs in the wheels of global fraud operations in recent years.
India airlifts 197 citizens who worked in Myanmar cybercrime hub from Thailand
“By the time I realised what was happening, I was taken into a guarded compound in Myanmar, crossing the river border illegally, and into the machinery of a cyber-fraud empire where Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Africans, and people from other developing countries were held captive and trained to deceive strangers for profit,” he says.
