The National Investigation Agency on Friday filed a chargesheet against five persons in connection with a Cambodia-linked human trafficking and cyber slavery case that involved luring young persons from India with fake job offers.In a statement on Tuesday, the agency said the chargesheet was filed before a special NIA court in Patna under sections of the Indian Penal Code.According to the agency, the accused were part of an organised trafficking syndicate that targeted young persons “on the pretext of legitimate jobs and handsome salaries”.The NIA said the persons were then trafficked to Cambodia, where their passports were seized and they were forced to work for scam companies involved in cyber fraud operations.“Any resistance on their part [was] met with mental and physical torture, including electric shocks, forceful confinement, denial of food and water etc,” the agency alleged.Investigators identified Anand Kumar Singh, also known as Munna Singh, as the alleged kingpin of the network, saying he worked with associates in Cambodia and recruited victims through sub-agents and travel agents in India.The NIA alleged that he charged between $2,000 and $3,000 for each person sent to fraudulent companies in Cambodia. However, the agency said he remains absconding.Three others, Abhay Nath Dubey and Rohit Yadav from Uttar Pradesh, and Abhiranjan Kumar from Bihar, were arrested in February after arriving in Delhi from Cambodia. Another suspect, Prahlad Kumar Singh, is currently out on bail.The agency said investigations are underway to identify other members of the syndicate and uncover the full extent of the conspiracy.On February 5, the Indian government told Parliament that nearly 7,000 Indian citizens had been rescued from cybercrime centres in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos between 2022 and 2025.On February 20, a United Nations report detailed instances of torture, sexual abuse and exploitation, food deprivation, solitary confinement and other human rights abuses suffered by persons trafficked from several countries into cybercrime operations in Southeast Asia and beyond.Terming it a “wicked problem”, the report sought urgent attention to the critical need for a human rights solution to the crisis.In January 2025, Scroll published a series of extensive reports about Chinese crime syndicates that run cyber crime centres from Southeast Asia, mainly Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. These highly sophisticated “scam compounds” are staffed with thousands of persons, many of them from India, who are lured with fake job offers and then forced to work on scamming people back home.However, those who make scam calls from such centres are victims themselves, having been lured into going abroad through fake job offers, Scroll found. When they tried to leave, they were “beaten mercilessly”.Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.Read Scroll’s reportage of the cyber-scam centres:India’s cyber-scam epidemic is part of a multibillion global industry. This series traces a full arcThe scammers who got scammed: How jobless Indians were lured into cyber slaveryI travelled to ground zero of the cyber scams targeting India. Here is what I found