Indian nationals are being tricked into joining the Russian army after being promised jobs in Dubai, with around 20 believed to have fallen for similar schemes, ending up on the front lines in the war in Ukraine, Business Insider reported.
One victim, Aazad Yousuf Kumar, 31, a science graduate, travelled from his home in northern India to Dubai in the hopes of working for an employment consultancy named Baba Vlogs, which is run by a man named Faisal Khan.
Kumar's mother revealed that after arriving in the United Arab Emirates, he was told there were no available jobs and that he would have to go to Russia for kitchen work.
However, he was then sent to a military base for weapons training.
"We lost touch with him for a while. When he finally phoned after about twenty days, he told us that he had been tricked and taken to an unknown place in Russia, where he had received weapons training for a fortnight, along with a dozen other Indians," his brother, Sajad Ahmad Kumar, told Le Monde.
"He was deployed near the front line with the Russian army. I spoke to him on December 26th. He cried constantly. He told me he wanted to come home," he added.
At least three Indians had been forced to fight for Russian forces after being sent there as "army security helpers," through Khan, Indian news outlet The Hindu reported quoting another victim.
They had been told that they would not be sent to the battlefield but were sent toRostov-on-Don andDonetsk to fight after receiving basic weapons training.
The unnamed victim also revealed that he had not received any of the money he had been promised for the job and that he had been able to escape the conflict area after being admitted to a hospital for frostbite.
He is now struggling to get help from the Indian Embassy in Moscow but has been "turned away several times".
Mohammed Asfan from Hyderabad, India, was killed in Russia on Wednesday, the Indian Embassy in Moscow confirmed on X, formerly Twitter without mentioning what he was doing in the country.