Jalandhar, Aug 8: About 40 youths from Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, who were sent to Iraq by unscrupulous travel agents with the promise of jobs, are leading miserable lives and forced to clear battlefields of the war-ravaged country, according to their families.
Their distressed family members filed a police complaint here on August 6, alleging that the travel agents promised the youths respectable jobs, but they had virtually been made “captive” in the jungles of Iraq and are forced to work as labourers for clearing the battlefields full of wreckage of the used missiles, bomb shells and rocket launchers.
The youths belonging to Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala in Punjab and Una in Himachal Pradesh, were charged over Rs 1.50 lakh by these agents, the families alleged. They claimed that their wards do not even know the name of the city they have been working in and are surviving on substandard diet.
Balmukund, father of a 20-year-old youth who was sent to Iraq by an agent, claimed that he had earlier also filed a complaint to the police here in this regard, but no action has been taken so far.
He claimed that his son has been sent to a terrorist training camp where youths are used for making explosives.
Jalandhar SSP H S Man said the police are investigating into the complaints. PTI
