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24 Indians rescued from Malaysia slave mafia

Prabhat, the Indian-origin agent in Malaysia who has disappeared with Narender Singh’s passport due to which Singh is stuck there

After mid-day exposed how the human trafficking mafia had forced Indians to work in inhuman conditions in a factory, the Malaysian government was forced to send immigration officials to take charge of the 24 Indians

 Lokesh Sapaliga and Narender Singh

After this paper’s exposé of the Malaysian human trafficking mafia that had forced Indian workers to slave in a fibre-processing factory, government authorities were forced to intervene and rescue the trapped workers from the factory. The action was taken after local activists and lawmakers took up the cudgels against the exploitation.

On November 7 and November 10, mid-day had published front-page accounts of 27-year-old Lokesh Sapaliga from Andheri and 22-year-old Narender Singh from Punjab. Both had narrated the horror they had encountered at the factory of CM Fibre Processing SDN BHD in Sibu, Sarawak, where they had to toil for 18 hours a day, and were paid a pittance in return. They had told this reporter how they were fed rotten food and were beaten up by the guards regularly. Both had been conned into taking the job on the pretext of working on a ship.

While Sapaliga made a daring escape in the middle of the night and returned home to India, Singh could only go as far as his friend’s place in Malaysia, since his passport and documents were with the placement agent, Prabhat, who brought him there. Singh, in fact, is still living with a fractured hand – he broke his hand after a fall from the furnace.

Outrage

The heartrending stories caught the attention of the media across Indian territories, and following mounting pressure, the Malaysian government intervened in the matter. On Tuesday afternoon, the local police and a team of reporters barged into the factory and rescued 24 Indians and some Nepalis. With the police action, CM Fibre has deactivated their websites and deleted all numbers of company officials from the websites.

According to the labourers working in the factory, a team of policemen, accompanied by immigration officials and reporters, reached the factory around 3.30 pm local time, and took one Nepali and two Indians with them. Post- interrogations of the trio, another team arrived in a couple of hours and took away another lot of 25 Indians.

Surjit Thapa, a Kolkata resident who was in the first lot, said, “The team arrived at the factory in the afternoon and asked for all the workers who wanted to go back to their country. We stepped forward, following which they brought us to this government office and detained us. They are now checking our details.”

Like Sapaliga and Singh, Thapa was also promised job on the ship and was eventually forced to work in the factory. “It was torturous. We worked day and night, but were starved. Thankfully, someone has come to our rescue. I hope we reach our country soon,” he said.

Another Nepali worker, who had paid Rs 1.5 lakh, added, “I hope they take action against the company that has kept us under house arrest. They should be taken to task.”

Unfortunately, some Nepali workers were unaware of the pressure on the government to release them, and they disappeared when the rescue team arrived. “If they take us from here, we will be sent to police lock-up for the lack of a passport and relevant documents. There will be no hope of recovering the money we paid to the agent. Who will bear our legal expenses?” said Dilip Khatri, a Nepali national who preferred to stay back. When mid-day tried explaining that the team was there to help him, he disconnected the phone abruptly.

A report published in Malaysia’s local news outlet malaymailonline stated: “The government do not pay heed to cases of employers switching the employment contracts of migrant workers upon arrival, with an estimated 90 per cent of local employers retaining the passports of the workers. Between 2012 and August 2013, there were a total of 120 cases brought under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, but resulted only in 23 convictions. After years of warnings, the United States (US) recently downgraded Malaysia to Tier 3 in its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, after the country ignored warnings to draw up a plan to comply with “the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.””

Indian authorities least bothered

Meanwhile, it seems Indian authorities are not worried about the plight of their fellow countrymen. Despite writing several mails and making calls to the office of the High Commission of India in Malaysia, officials have not bothered to respond. There has been no response to tweets sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on @narendramodi @PMOIndia, and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on @SushmaSwaraj.

The Palghar police, under whose jurisdiction the international racket is flourishing, proved to be the worst of the lot. Despite repeated attempts to get in touch with Mohd. Suvez Haque, police superintendent, Palghar district, he didn’t respond. His PRO refused to transfer the call to Haque, despite having been apprised of the sensitivity of the human trafficking racket flourishing in Nallasopara.

Mumbai man’s daring escape from human slavery mafia in Malaysia

Lokesh Sapaliga’s 25-day ordeal started with a job offer at an oil rig in Malaysia, and ended in a factory where he toiled for 20 hours, ate food crawling with worms, and slept on bedbug-ridden mattresses, until he ran through a jungle to his freedom

Lokesh Sapaliga (27) heaved a sigh of relief when he touched down in Mumbai on October 23. Sapaliga had just returned from a hellhole in Malaysia, after being lured there on the pretext of a well-paying job on an oil rig and sold into slavery.

As he took his first free steps in more than three weeks, he recounted, in his mind, how he had toiled for 20 hours a day under inhuman conditions and escaped from a factory in a jungle.

Sapaliga’s ordeal began in September, when he chanced upon a job posting on a classifieds website. He had then been working in the Gulf as an electrician. The ad, posted by one Ram Support Service, a placement agency based in Nallasopara, promised a job on an oil rig in Kuala Lumpur.

The owner of the agency, Narendra Kumar Yadav, promised the Andheri resident a handsome pay of Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000. Lured by the money, Sapaliga quit his job and came to Mumbai to speak to Yadav.
 
“Yadav took Rs 1.7 lakh from me to arrange my visa, flight tickets and the continuous discharge certificate (CDC, a document required for someone who works on-board a ship). I boarded a flight on September 19 for Kuala Lumpur.

My visa had a proper stamp stating I was going to work on a ship, so there was no question of casting doubts upon the offer,” recalled Sapaliga. Unfortunately, there was.
 
Factory slave
After reaching the Malaysian capital, Sapaliga met one Rajkaran Verma, a sub-agent, who stuffed him into the boot of a car and sold him off to the Malaysian human trafficking mafia.

“The agents smuggled us into a unit of CM Fibre Processing SDN BHD, a factory based in Sibu, Malaysia. Since I was inside, they avoided checks on the way,” said Sapaliga. On reaching there after a two-hour drive, the agents scooted off.
 
Sapaliga was shocked to see hundreds of labourers toiling in unhygienic and inhuman conditions for almost the entire day. Most were from India and Nepal; he was now one among them.

“We worked for 14, 18 and even 20 hours a day for a paltry sum of Rs 400. My hands and legs used to go numb from exhaustion. Slaves who dared to complain were thrashed by the factory guards,” he recalled. In the few hours of respite workers got, they were accommodated in shipping containers.

Each ‘room’ had one fan, and 15-20 men competed for the little breeze that it threw their way. The mattresses were infested with bedbugs, and with a welding unit adjacent to the containers, it was nearly impossible to get any sleep. “We were also made to work night shifts without prior notice,” he added.
 
Hungry and broken
There was nary a day when the labourers got enough food. Sapaliga told mid-day that they were fed rice and sabzi three times a day, but it was never enough. Moreover, these were stale meals, with worms competing for the food on the plate. The plates were also never washed.

To break the monotony, they would be served rice and rotten fish. But, everybody ate without complaining, for they wouldn’t get any food if they did. Sapaliga also says there was no safety equipment or access to medical facilities. “Slaves who worked near the furnace had no helmets or safety gloves. As a result, many got injured but there was no medical help.

There was a Punjabi man who had broken his hand in an accident, but they made him work. Another worker had also sustained severe burn injuries while working near the furnace,” he said. Sapalaga also suffered a head injury when an iron rod accidentally hit him.
 
The escape
Sapaliga worked in the fibre-processing unit from September 25 to October 20. Realising that he wouldn’t last long there, with great difficulty, he bribed some men and made a phone call to his brother-in-law, Prakash Karkera, in Mumbai.
 
On hearing of his kin’s suffering, Karkera landed straight at the office of the placement agency located in Solan Amit Shopping Centre, Nallasopara. The owner, Yadav, assured Karkera that his brother-in-law would be safe and back to India soon.
 
“Yadav threatened me that if I went to the police or the media, he would get Lokesh killed with the help of his connections in Malaysia,” Karkera told this paper. However, the family continued to pressurise Yadav to bring Lokesh back, issuing threats of police complaints. It worked.
 
Verma, the Indian sub-agent, called up Sapaliga and told him they couldn’t do much until he fled from the factory. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, Sapaliga took the risk and, in the wee hours of October 21, escaped from the unit while others were asleep.
 
“The factory is surrounded by a jungle. It was pitch dark and I somehow reached the highway, where I met Verma and his two associates. They had my passport and visa. Before I left for the airport, they made be sign an agreement stating that I was offered the job I desired by the placement agency and that I held no grouse against them.
 
I had to sign the document, or else they would’ve torn my passport and visa,” he said. The men dropped him to Sibu airport, from where he took a flight to Kuala Lumpur. A day’s halt later, he boarded a flight to Mumbai. On November 5, he lodged a complaint with the Nallasopara police. He had also clandestinely managed to document his experiences on his cellphone camera.