Indians who fled a Myanmar cyber scam centre flown home from Thailand

India repatriated the first batch of hundreds of its nationals on Thursday who fled to Thailand from Myanmar last month, where most had been working at a notorious centre for online scams.

The center, known as KK Park on the outskirts of the border city of Myawaddy and said to house a major cybercrime operation, was raided by Myanmar regime forces in mid-October to suppress cross-border online scams and illegal gambling.

An Indian air force transport plane left Thailand en route to India and another plane was to leave later in the day, with about 270 out of 465 Indians who are to be repatriated. The remainder will leave Thailand next Monday, according to Maitree Chupreecha, commander of the Thai army’s northern region Naresuan Task Force.

In March, India repatriated 549 nationals after an earlier crackdown on cybercrime operations at the Myanmar-Thailand border.