India airlifts 283 citizens rescued from Myanmar

A C-17 Indian military plane Monday evacuated 266 men and 17 women stuck at the Thai-Myanmar border for weeks after being rescued from scam call centres in Myanmar’s Myawaddy. A second batch of 240 are expected to be repatriated Tuesday.
The evacuees belong to multiple states, including Andhra, Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, UP and Bengal. It was not immediately known where the plane landed in India. K Madhukar Reddy, a native of Rangapeta in Telangana’s Karimnagar district, said over the phone Indian embassy officials and Myanmar’s Border Guard Force facilitated the evacuation.
‘Living conditions at Myawaddy decent, terrible near border’
According to an AFP report, a group of Indian officials crossed into Myanmar to accompany seven buses taking the freed Indian nationals — as well as three more carrying their luggage — to Mae Sot airport in northwest Thailand. Authorities in Myanmar, under pressure from ally China, have cracked down in recent weeks on illegal online fraud operations that have flourished in the country’s lawless borderlands. Around 7,000 workers from at least two dozen countries have been freed, the majority of them Chinese, but many have been languishing in squalid conditions in temporary holding camps on the Thai-Myanmar border.
“We just want to get out of these detention centres and return home,” one of them told TOI.
An Indian currently in detention described the conditions. “The accommodation is decent at Myawaddy detention. They have provided well-maintained AC rooms, but the food is inadequate — sometimes we get one meal a day.”
He said conditions were much worse at the border. “There are over 500 people there, with no proper toilets or food. They are forced to stay in army camp-like tents. When we arrived, they took away everyone’s mobile phones.”
The rescue operation followed a crackdown on fraudulent cybercrime syndicates that lure foreign workers, including Indians, with fake job offers. These networks, often linked to Chinese-run scam operations, operate from compounds such as KK Park in Myanmar, where victims are forced to carry out phishing schemes, investment frauds, and romance scams.
In Feb, Myanmar’s military and BGF raided KK Park and freed about 70 Indians, including five women. Those were later moved to the Thai border, awaiting repatriation.
Authorities say many victims were recruited through social media and fake employment agencies, particularly targeting those with IT skills. These scams, often operating in Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, promise lucrative salaries and attractive benefits. Once the recruits arrive, their passports are confiscated, and they are held in heavily guarded compounds, coerced into running online scams under the threat of violence.