NEW DELHI, India, April 28, Reuter: Police have smashed a racket that duped Indians into taking factory jobs in Libya where they were instead conscripted into the Libyan army, a senior police officer said on Thursday.
Deputy Police Commissioner Amod Kanth said in a telephone interview 97 Indians paid a recruiting agency in New Delhi for factory jobs in Libya and ended up in army camps there.
He said three people, including a police constable, had been arrested and efforts are being made to bring the deceived workers home.
Kanth said the Indians went to Libya last December after paying RK. Enterprises, a New Delhi based employment agency, 12,000 to 15,000 rupees for jobs in a leather factory.
Instead, they were taken to army camps and told to undergo military training. According to Western diplomats, Libya has recruited medenaries from the Moslem world for its battles against the neighbouring chad over the last few years.
Some of men from the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh escaped and fled to the Indian embassy in Tripoli, he said. Forty of them returned to India in the last few days.
About 50 others were still in Libya, although all had left the army camps and were either waiting to return home or had found Jobs in factories, Kanth said.
He said the agency had been closed by the Labour Ministry.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 6, 1988
