Thirty five youth from Punjab,who were assumed dead but were located alive after six years in captivity on the island of Mauritania,near Algeria and Morocco recently,had tried to escape but were caught and beaten mercilessly by a local travel agent called Mohammad,according to a Barcelona-based journalist Harpal Singh Khanpuri. Khanpuri,from Hoshiarpur district of Punjab spoke over the phone from Barcelona to The Indian Express. The journalist said that on July 5,he received a call from a Saharanur based youth (who refused to disclose his name owing to pressure from his travel agent),who had come to Spain recently,that a group of 35 youth from Doaba region of Punjab were taken captive since 2005 by a local agent named Mohammad in Mauritania. The youth from Saharanpur said he had met them recently during his stay on the island along with some others and the group of 35 boys had given him the phone numbers of their parents in Punjab so that he could inform them about their plight, said Harpal. The Saharanur youth,however,lost all the phone numbers because the paper on which he had noted down the numbers got washed away while he was crossing sea on a boat to enter Spain illegally,according to the journalist. He had no other way to contact the families of the 35 boys and so he called and told me to publish an article about them so that the parents of these youth realise they were alive, said Harpal. The Saharanpur youth told him that on his way to Spain,he along with a group of some other boys,were made to stay at a building on Mauritania and at night he heard that someone speaking in Punjabi in the adjoining room of the same building. He managed to enter that room and found that there was a group of 35 youth,who were in a pathetic condition,and asked them that where they were going, said Harpal.According to him,the youth told him that they were on their way to Spain in 2005 but were taken captive by a travel agent who was not paid by the Indian agents,after he had taken a similar group to Spain, added Harpal. He told me that there was no means of communication close to this building and the local people carried only walkie-talkie systems to communicate with each other, said Harpal. The families of the boys have heard nothing since 2005 and travel agents,who had sent these youth abroad,believed they had drowned as the boat they were travelling in,capsized. A case of kidnapping with intention of murder was registered against the travel agents. The families of the 35 youth had paid between Rs. 3 lakhs to Rs. 6.5 lakhs each to these agents to take them to Spain.
