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Six people from Telangana’s Nizamabad district who were trafficked to the cyber crime hub of Myanmar's Myawaddy in 2025 were rescued and flown back to Hyderabad on Tuesday, January 13, with the intervention of the local police and the Indian embassy. The intervention came about after the Telangana State Cyber Security Bureau (TGCSB) registered an FIR against human trafficking.
The victims include a 23-year-old private school teacher, her 24-year-old husband, a 29-year-old housekeeper, a 31-year-old milk vendor, a 26-year-old student, and a farmer.
The FIR was based on a complaint of the farmer based in Nizamabad’s Armoor. The complaint said that he was approached by a friend, T Manideep, in September 2025 with the promise of a data entry job in Thailand. He flew from Hyderabad to Bangkok in September, after which Manideep introduced him to another man named Challa Garige Naveen. Naveen smuggled the victim out of Telangana and took him to Dongei Park in Myawaddy.
The trafficking is indicative of a ‘pig butchering’ scam, a ploy several Indian job seekers have fallen prey to in the recent past. The term 'pig butchering' is derived from the agricultural practice of fattening pigs before slaughter, a metaphor for how scammers ‘fatten' their victims with false trust and affection before exploiting them financially.
The FIR against Manideep and others was registered under 318(4) (cheating), 351(2) (criminal intimidation), 308(5) (extortion) 127(2) (wrongful confinement), 143 (trafficking of persons) read with Section 61(2) (criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Section 66D (cheating by personation using computer resource) of the Information Technology (IT) Act and relevant clauses of the Emigration Act.
