Bhupinder Singh, deported from Thailand in July. "My dream turned into a nightmare," says the resident of a village near Ropar who paid Rs 4 lakh to emigrate to Korea. He ended up spending six months in Thailand after being dumped by his agent.

As the American Airlines flights rammed into New York's World Trade Center last year, a small-time farmer from Bhano Langa village in Punjab registered the damning impact. In Armenia at the time, Lakhbir Singh was en route to Greece as part of an illegal emigrant group. Just as the group was planning to sneak into Turkey, the 9/11 assaults precipitated heightened global surveillance and their travel agent disappeared. Today, after the expiry of his tourist visa, Lakhbir is in an Armenian jail. Back home his 23-year-old wife Harvinder Kaur laments, "But for the US attacks he would have reached Greece. I can only pray and cry for him now." Fatalism may help cope, but will not facilitate Lakhbir's return. Nor will it retrieve the Rs 4 lakh Lakhbir paid to the agent.

In what has burgeoned into an epidemic in Punjab's villages, the Rs 400-crore illegal emigration industry has suffered a setback after 9/11. Following tightened security and a clampdown on immigration, aspiring emigrants are facing detention and deportation after being duped and dumped by their agents in countries on the trafficking routes (see graphic). Since October last year, Indian embassies in 32 countries have forwarded to the Punjab Government 8,013 cases for verification of the stranded people, a big jump from less than 1,000 cases prior to September last year. Of these, at least 3,600 cases are from Greece, whose massive shipping base makes it an ideal launching port for trafficking into Europe and the US.

Baldev Singh, deported from Paris to Thailand, and then in May back to India. "I'm repenting the day I decided to emigrate," says Baldev who paid his agent Rs 4.5 lakh to go to France but spent six months in a Thailand jail instead.

Subsequently, deportations have also increased, with 2,000 Punjabi migrants sent back home in the past year, a fraction of the "nowhere human cargo" abandoned by the mafia operating on the Greece-Turkey-Italy axis, the Commonwealth of Independent States-Europe routes, and the south-east Asian countries.

"Due to the fragile security environment after 9/11, these countries have become circumspect and are bearing down on illegal travellers with renewed vigour," says Arvind Kumar, passport officer, Chandigarh. The detentions have meant long queues at the Chandigarh and Jalandhar passport offices as families of stranded travellers arrange for fresh documents. These emigrants have either entered illegally or hold expired visas and are seeking fresh passports from India to prolong their stay and seek work permit or political asylum. Others have lost their passports to the absconding agents or have deliberately destroyed them to perpetuate their stay till they reach their destinations. Consequently, there has been an increase in the number of emergency certificates issued for repatriation.

Lakhbir Singh (in picture), currently detained in a jail in Armenia. "But for the 9/11 US attacks, he would have reached his destination," says Harvinder Kaur, wife of Lakhbir, who paid Rs 4 lakh to emigrate to Greece.

"My return was like a rebirth," says Pavittar Singh who was recently repatriated from Kyiv, Ukraine, after spending nine horrifying months in jail. The 20-year-old who paid Rs 4 lakh to his agent to go to Holland skipped college and joined 40 other aspirants. Instead, they were taken to Moscow and abandoned on the snow-bound border to cross over to Ukraine, from where they were caught while trying to steal into Poland. "We had given him up for dead," says his father who had to shell out another Rs 25,000 for his deportation.

Despite the traumatic experiences, the craze for foreign shores has not abated, with shrinking land holdings and the razzmatazz of NRI affluence fuelling the desperation. Nowhere is the passion more pronounced than in the dollar-rich Doaba region, which accounts for 1.3 million expatriates in the past five decades or so. Comprising Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur and Nawanshahr districts, the Doaba is the hub of well-entrenched travel agents who operate at the village level but are part of a multi-tier international smuggling racket with bases in Delhi, Mumbai and abroad.

Harjinder and Sukhjinder, deported from Greece in May. "It was a traumatic journey," says Harjinder of his 32-day sea trip from Sri Lanka to Greece when he, along with 350 men, survived on pieces of bread given every 48 hours.

The craving for immigrant status in a high-risk environment has only meant higher premium for trafficking. So from Rs 6 lakh for illegal entry into Europe and Rs 8 lakh for the US last year, the rates have been hiked by Rs 2 lakh across the board. "Only the rates and routes have changed," says Kapurthala police chief R.N. Dhoke, after the interrogation of recently deported youth and travels agents arrested during a special campaign. The agents continue to evolve ingenious ways of beating the immigration checks. Since detection of forgery in travel documents has become easier, photo-replaced passports have given way to use of a valid passport and visa to reach the countries close to the port of destination. From here, people slip in via land or sea.

According to a Ministry of Home Affairs report on immigration trends, the new routes include capitals of CIS nations, like Moscow, Minsk and Bishkek, used as bases for entering Germany, Italy, Britain and France. The US-bound migrants are increasingly going via Mexico and Honduras, while Larnaca, Cyprus, is the launching port for Italy, and Bangkok for south-east Asian countries, including Malaysia, Korea and Indonesia. For reaching Latin American countries, Jamaica is a stop, as is Lebanon for Italy, Greece and Germany.

Pavittar Singh, from Kapurthala, repatriated from Kyiv, Ukraine. "My return is like a rebirth for me," says the 20-year-old who wanted to go to Holland but was abandoned by his agent in Ukraine and caught.

Among the new modus operandi used for emigration to Europe is what is called "dropping". The agents book people for journey to an African or a South American country via Europe and the passengers "drop" midway, destroy their passports and demand political asylum. The valid documents at the first embarking port makes it impossible for the immigration authorities to disrupt the journey.

Of late, traffickers have begun using unlikely, often highly risky, sea routes. In January this year, Harjinder Singh, 25, from Nurpur Lobana village in Kapurthala district, was part of a 45-member group flown to Kandy in Sri Lanka. At night they were taken via fishing boats to the high seas to board, through ropes, a cargo vessel. For the next 32 days, 350 men were huddled in a tiny basement, surviving on small pieces of bread given every 48 hours. "It was a hellish journey filled with fear and hunger," recalls Harjinder. Soon after the boat docked at a Greece port, the emigrants were arrested and deported after a brief detention.

Worse still are the Lebanon-bound youth pushed into Pakistan from Iran and Turkey. The standoff in the Indo-Pakistan ties has left many languishing in Baluchistan jails. This in no way has dampened the ardour of the emigrants or their families. When the parents of those detained in Kyiv and Istanbul were asked to pay for the return tickets, most expressed reluctance. "Many were concerned about the wasted investment in sending their wards abroad," says Amarjit Singh, passport officer, Jalandhar. And recently, when a Punjab-based organisation pursuing the case of the victims of the Malta boat tragedy-in which 170 Punjabi youth perished near Greece in 1996-offered to conduct the bereaved families to the spot where the boat had sunk, most families offered to send the youth considering it a good opportunity to send them abroad.

With smuggling human cargo becoming increasingly difficult, there has been an upsurge in complaints against agents. "Frauds by travel agents is a major crime in the Doaba," says Rohit Chaudhry, DIG, Jalandhar. This year, the Jalandhar police registered 241 cases against 335 travel agents for duping foreign aspirants, with Nawanshahr alone accounting for frauds worth Rs 5 crore involving 155 travel agents. Among those booked by the Kapurthala police is Sunny Gill and Loveleen, son-in-law and daughter of wrestler-turned-film personality Dara Singh. Gill had allegedly collected Rs 3 crore from 78 young men, promising to send them to Canada as a wrestling team.

"The victims use the firs only as a pressure tactic to retrieve money," says V. Neeraja, Nawanshahr police chief. Invariably, the travel agents settle out of court by returning the money or a part of it before the trial. In the absence of complainants, the cases fall flat.

That the "impact of the 9/11 events has worn off" is evident from the serpentine queues at Jalandhar's passport office, which caters only to six of Punjab's 18 districts. The 300-500 passports issued per day after the US attacks have risen to 700 per day in the past two months, the highest in the country.

It is unlikely the trend will suffer permanently so long as the villages of Punjab continue to throb with the craving for foreign shores.