NEW DELHI, AUG 9 :  There are a total of 91 cases so far of Indians who have been recruited into the Russian Army, of whom eight have died, while 14 have been discharged or have come back with India’s assistance, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told the Lok Sabha today.

He said there are 69 Indian citizens who are awaiting release from the Russian army.
He said that India takes this issue very, very seriously, and that he has himself raised it numerous times with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

When Prime Minister Modi was in Moscow last month for the bilateral summit, he raised it personally with President Putin and “he got President Putin’s assurance that any Indian national who is in the service of the Russian army will be discharged and released”.

EAM said that “the problem is that the Russian authorities maintain that these Indian nationals entered into contracts for service with the Russian army. We do not, we are not necessarily subscribing to that.”

“I think in many cases, there are reasons to indicate that our nationals were misled, that they were being told that they were going for some other job and that they were then deployed with the Russian army,” he said.

On the action taken by India, he said that the CBI has registered a criminal case against 19 individuals and entities in the matter.
“They have examined those 14 people who have returned from Russia. Sufficient evidence has surfaced against 10 human traffickers whose identities we know. During the investigation, two of the accused were arrested on April 24 and two more on the May 7. All the four accused are presently in judicial custody,” he informed the House.

Referring to the cyber trafficking of people who are being misled, taken to South East Asia and made to work on cyber scams and related issues, the EAM said that the government takes the matter very, very seriously.

“We have taken it up with all the concerned governments at a political level.” “So far, 650 Indian nationals have been repatriated from Cambodia, 415 from Myanmar and 548 from Laos,” he said.
“This is an issue for which we have to be very vigilant, we have to crack down very hard,” he added.(UNI)