There are 19 people seated in black chairs in a small hall on the first floor of the Babarmahal-based Anti Human Trafficking Bureau. Three are women and the rest are men, as they sit there with their pale faces.

They all have had their dream of going to their dream country, the United States, dashed. They lost a lot of money in the process, a sum they could never expect to earn back by working in Nepal.

Senior Superintendent of Police Jeevan Kumar Shrestha, chief of the bureau, enters the hall to talk to the victims.

“Each of you have paid anywhere between Rs2.5 million to Rs7.5 million to sell yourself to a fraud to go to the US through illegal channels,” said Shrestha. “If you had invested that money in some business, agriculture or anywhere in Nepal, you would have become your own bosses.”

He consoled the victims that the bureau was intent on punishing the culprit.

It was Shrestha’s team that last Wednesday arrested an alleged human trafficker Hasta Gautam, 50, a man from ward 4 of Sisne Rural Municipality in East Rukum and currently a resident of the US state of Texas, on charges of trafficking Nepalis to various countries. According to police, Gautam was arrested from Belahiya on the Nepal-India border in Rupandehi district under the command of Deputy Superintendent of Police Gyan Bahadur Bista.

Gautam reportedly has agents working in Nepal, the UAE, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, as well as in Latin America.

According to the bureau, Gautam has collected over Rs20 million from gullible clients, with false promises of sending them to the US and landing them lucrative jobs.

“Gautam has admitted to successfully taking 200 people to the US through illegal channels. He says just 13 people were stranded at various destinations,” Shrestha told the Post.

Shrestha said that as these people were ready to go to the US through illegal channels, they must take responsibility for their decisions. “If only they had followed the law, they would not have had any problems,” he added.

Most of the scam victims were seen nodding to Shrestha’s words. A few of them said it was a compulsion, as they didn’t have any option in the country. But a woman in her early 50s was looking at the ceiling with tearful eyes.

She is Bimala, mother of Sandesh Thapa (name changed), 28, one of the victims who lost Rs2.5 million she gave her son to go to the US. The son worked in Dubai.

“I am a single mother and I raised him since I was 19 and while operating a small hotel in Pokhara,” said the mother with tearful eyes. She came to Kathmandu from Pokhara on Saturday upon learning about Gautam’s arrest.

“My son was in Dubai. After I had a phone conversation with Gautam, he assured me that he could easily arrange for my son to go to the US where he could earn more. We trusted him,” said the mother who suffers from hypertension and diabetes.

She says her poor health does not allow her to run her business, which in any case is now closed.

It was in 2021 that her son Sandesh (name changed), who made a decent earning while working at a supermarket in Dubai, met with an agent sent by Gautam.

“Gautam had rented an entire building, setting up an office in Dubai near Al Moosa Tower,” said Sandesh.

Sandesh feigned sick to avoid going to his job for a whole month. He also managed to bring back his passport from his Dubai employer and submitted it to Gautam’s agent.

Back home, Gautam, the racket’s kingpin, would talk to his mother on WhatsApp regularly, assuring that he would take full responsibility of her son until he lands in the US. “I had told Gautam that he was my only son and that I was completely dependent on him. Gautam asked me not to worry at all, that everything would be fine,” said the mother. She even gave Gautam Rs1 million as an advance payment.

Sandesh was told that he would initially be taken to Mexico, whereupon he would be smuggled into the US. But then the agent handed back his passport with an Egyptian visa. He would have seven Nepali friends including one from Pokhara. One of them, adds Sandesh, paid Rs4.5 million to the agent.

The agent kept him in Egypt for a month. There, he was asked to go to the Embassy of Nepal as his visa had already expired, but the embassy wouldn’t renew his visa. Then the agent demanded another Rs500,000, and took him to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

He was kept in Mauritius for 10 days. “Again, the agent asked me for an additional Rs500,000, and my mother sent the money from Nepal,” said Sandesh. The mother and son had full trust in the agent.

The agent then provided him a visa for Suriname, a country on the northeastern coast of South America. “First, I was excited, but later, when I checked the visa with a QR code, I found it was fake,” said Sandesh.

This was when both the agent and Gautam went incommunicado. Sandesh could not say anything to his mother. “I could not come to Nepal. What would I tell my mother after she had spent so much money? So I came to India to a friend of mine,” said Sandesh.

He returned to Nepal in April.

“We now have no means to pay back the loans,” said Bimala.

All 19 people present at the Anti-Human Trafficking Bureau on Sunday had their own horrific stories of regret and betrayal, as Gautam had taken hefty sums from each of them.

The bureau had asked them to write down how they were flown, and the hardships they faced on the way. Many wrote that when they were unable to pay the agents in the transit countries, their mobile phones were seized, and they were even physically tortured.

Police say they have a record of Gautam smuggling Nepalis to different destinations since 1997. According to officials, he has been kept in police custody for investigation and they are preparing to prosecute him as per the Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act, 2064 (2007) and the Organised Crime Act-2013.

Gautam was arrested last week based on complaints filed by three victims on July 2. The bureau also arrested Kamal Tamang of Pokhara Municipality ward-7, one of Gautam’s agents.

After Gautam’s arrest, six people had come to the bureau to inform the police about their problems and the torture they faced in transit.

“There may be many others Gautam has duped but they are reluctant to come forward as they still hope to fly to the US,” said Shrestha, the police officer. “Others fear public embarrassment if what they did comes out.”