Inhuman treatment meted out to deportees, will raise issue in Parliament: Seechewal

Rajya Sabha member and environmentalist Balbir Singh Seechewal has strongly condemned the US practice of sending Indians back in shackles. He said sending them back in this manner had tarnished India’s image across the world as 104 Indians were sent back on a military plane after being kept in chains for 35 to 40 hours. He said instead of doing politics on the issue of Indians returning from the USA, they should be supported. He also urged the government to tell the US government that the Indians living there were not criminals or terrorists who had to be sent in shackles.

He said the inhuman treatment meted out to the deportees by the US government was very unfortunate as these people were not criminals, but had reached there through wrong agents in search of employment. He also demanded that the government should take strict action against the real culprits, i.e., travel agents, who were misleading people and sending them abroad through wrong means. He also said that it was very important to take strict action against these rogue travel agents to check human trafficking.

Seechewal said he would raise the issue of this atrocity on Indians and Punjabis in Parliament and will demand full cooperation in the rehabilitation of the deportees. He added that with the cooperation of the Ministry of External Affairs, so far they had solved more than 200 cases of Indians who were trapped abroad due to human trafficking. He said that most of these cases were of Indian girls in Arab countries, who had been sold by travel agents.