Woman held for trafficking Telangana, AP job seekers to Cambodia

Hyderabad: A woman has been arrested from Mumbai by the Telangana Cyber Security Bureau (TGCSB) for trafficking youth from the Telugu-speaking states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to Cambodia, where the trafficked victims are forced to commit cybercrimes against resident Telugu natives.

The arrested agent has been identified as Priyanka Shivkumar Siddu, a resident of Chembur, Mumbai. According to the TGCSB, she was running an illegal job processing agency and was advertising data entry jobs abroad with attractive pay.

Offering false promises, she allegedly lured jobseekers and handed them over to a Chinese company in Cambodia, Zhan Zei. The police say that she used to earn 500 dollars for each candidate she sent them in addition to Rs 30,000 she collected as the commission from the trafficked victims.

The arrest was made following the leads given by two such Telugu speaking victims who returned to India after going through months of physical and mental torture in Cambodia. They were offered high paying data entry jobs in Cambodia and Singapore by the agency run by the accused, and were charged Rs 30,000 in commissions. The victims were given visiting visas, promising to convert them into work visa upon arrival.

But contrary to the victims’ expectations they were handed over to a Chinese agent in Cambodia, who took them to remote locations in the South-East Asian country and coerced them into committing cyber frauds against Indian nationals. Realising that they were mislea and trafficked, the job seeking youth had seldom options left other than comply with the instructions of the crime group or endure grave physical and mental torture.

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