KATHMANDU: 28 Nepali nationals heading to Poland from Nepal have been stranded in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan for more than 3 months now, sources have said.

The group of 28 people heading to Poland had left the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) on July 24, 2019.

The group which said they had Warsha, the capital city of Poland as their destination had their first transit in Dubai, where they changed their plane and boarded on another flight for Baku, the beautiful capital city of Azerbaijan.

Sumit Chaudhary (Chitwan), along with Dipendra Bhandari (Baglung), Krishna Bhandari (Gulmi), was in the group of youths stranded in Baku for more than 3 months. According to Sumit, the traffickers had their setting in different airports giving shape to this unlawful act.

Sumit, Krishna and Dipendra, like most of the aspirant foreign labors, had taken loan in high interest to materialize their dreams.

“Most of our friends are still there, we managed to be back with difficulties,” narrated Krishna who was seen in Human Trafficking Investigation Bureau’ to report about the ‘rip-off’.

According to Sumit, a group of traffickers led by Sangit Chaudhary of Itahari had misled them towards the ‘Poland Dream’ and were responsible for ripping them off financially.

“Despite the stories of treachery and fraudulence, the police has some difficulties in booking the culprits owing to the formal proof,” Govinda Thapaliya, an SP at the Bureau says.

Travel agency’s setting in the immigration

The group of traffickers are found to have extended their network in most of the major transits of the world.

The immigration regulations restrict the youths without strong documents from crossing the immigration desk. However, the immigration desk is found to have making the best of the provision for ‘milking’ the traffickers.

“On 24 July, the immigration desk of TIA had stopped us for a while,” Krishna recalls the ‘hurdles’ at the immigration, “however, within one minute after Dinesh Chapagain from Pragati Travels and Tours, phoned the authorities, we were allowed in.”

According to Krishna, though they were asked to stand aside at Azerbaijan immigration, one Pakistani national named Sabir Hussein lobbied to take them in. Sabir alias Yusuf helped them admitted in Western Caspian University, Azerbaijan saying they were there to join English language courses.

According to Krishna and Santosh, there are hundreds of youths like them stranded in Baku.