LUCKNOW: It was heart-rending for Devendra Singh and Rakshit Balyan of Muzaffarnagar and Gurpreet Singh of Pilibhit as they narrated their ordeal. Their offshore expedition, with starry dreams in eyes, and its unfortunate closure with deportation along with 104 illegal immigrants has brought them only sufferings.
Devendra Singh, 38, a cane farmer from Muzaffarnagar agrees that life was not that difficult for him back home but he aspired for more. “I wanted the income in dollars.”
Devendra had left country in November last year, Rakshit in October on a tourist visa with the dreams of a new life and Gurpreet had left India in 2022. They all followed the routes passing through dark alleys, that too after shelling out huge amounts to traffickers.
Devendra claims that he had gone to Thailand on a personal visit and he met his conman there. He was lured into a life of promises in the US and did everything from exhausting personal savings to borrowing from relatives and taking loans to meet the Rs 40 lakh demanded by his trafficker. He embarked on his journey on November 29 and went to Thailand followed by half a dozen locations in Vietnam, China to El Salvador.