AHMEDABAD: Jhulasan in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar had an unlikely lift-off to fame two decades ago when it emerged as the village to which Nasa astronaut Sunita Williams traces her roots. The comfort of obscurity is what its 5,000-odd residents might now prefer as spotlight shifts to around two dozen men from the village, all illegal immigrants to the US, amid reports that they have gone incommunicado.
Till late Friday, two days after a US military aircraft carrying 104 Indian deportees landed in Punjab’s Amritsar, there was still no clarity on whether the group from Jhulasan had illegally entered American territory or were in transit.”The horror stories some of these deportees have returned with are adding to our anxiety over the whereabouts of the two dozen men who remain untraceable,” a village elder said.
One school of thought is that dodgy immigration agents might have advised the missing men not to contact their families or relatives until they settle there. “They may be en route to their destinations or in some hideout along the route,” the villager said.
Sarpanch Mani Patel said around 3,000 villagers were from the Patidar community, of whom nearly 2,000 were based in the US. “People from my village go to the US in the hope of finding employment that would enable them to earn several times more than they would in India. Peer pressure is also a factor. Some of us earn reasonably well here, but the US holds the promise of a better life, even at the risk of illegal immigration,” Patel said.
Illegal immigration is rampant in many villages. Families don’t approach cops even when their loved ones don’t contact them for long periods.
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