The Maharashtra Police on Friday said that they rescued more than 60 Indian citizens who were forced to work at cyber-scam call centres in Myanmar, PTI reported.

Five agents, including one foreign national have been arrested, and three first information reports have been registered in the matter, the news agency quoted an unidentified official as saying.

The police alleged that the agents had lured people through social media with promises of high-paying jobs in Thailand and other East Asian nations. They arranged passports and flights, sending the victims to Thailand on tourist visas. However, upon arrival, they were taken to the Thai-Myanmar border.

“They were made to cross a river in small boats into Myanmar and then confined in heavily guarded compounds controlled by armed groups,” an official from Maharashtra cyber police was quoted as saying by Mid Day.

Inside these compounds, they were coerced into signing one-year contracts and made to engage in cyber fraud – ranging from fake investment schemes to digital arrest scams.

Those arrested have been identified as Manish Grey alias Maddy, Taisan alias Aaditya Ravi Chandran, Rupnarayan Ramdhar Gupta, Jensi Rani D and Talaniti Nulaxi, a Chinese-Kazakhstani citizen.

In January, 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 people, many of them from India, who are lured with fake job offers and then forced to work on scamming people back home.

Read Scroll’s reportage of the cyber-scam centres:

Also read: