“For 40 hours, we were handcuffed, our feet tied with chains and were not allowed to move an inch from our seats. After repeated requests, we were allowed to drag ourselves to the washroom. The crew would open the door of the lavatory and shove us in,” said Harwinder Singh. The 40-year-old from Tahli village in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur is among the 104 ‘illegal’ immigrants whom the US deported in the first batch to India.
Recounting the travel as a “worse than hell,” experience, Harwinder said that they couldn’t even eat properly for 40 hours. “They would force us to eat with handcuffs on. Our requests to the security personnel to remove the cuffs for a few minutes fell on deaf ears. The journey was not only physically painful, but also mentally exhausting…,” he said, adding that a “kind” crew member offered them fruits.
The US military aircraft — a C-17 Globemaster — that the Donald Trump administration deployed made four pit stops for fuel refilling before landing at Amritsar Wednesday. Harwinder said he could not sleep as he kept thinking about the promise of a better life that he made to his wife before his “dunki” travel eight months ago.
In June 2024, Harwinder and his wife Kuljinder Kaur, took a decision. With two children — 12-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter — the couple, married for 13 years, was struggling to make ends meet by selling cattle milk. Out of nowhere, a distant relative offered to take Harwinder to the US in 15 days legally, not via a dunki route, in exchange of Rs 42 lakh. To gather the amount, the family mortgaged their only acre of land and borrowed from private lenders at steep interest rates.
