Ahmed (not his real name) and 40 other Bangladeshi workers boarded a flight to Kuala Lumpur from Dhaka, Bangladesh, on March 28...

Ahmed and his friends sold whatever little gold they had and their farm animals, borrowed from friends and family with an arrangement to give up their crops’ harvest as interest throughout the duration of the debt, and took out loans from Islami Bank and NGO banks like BRAC with interest rates as high as 10% to 14% to make payments to the employment agency in Dhaka.

They paid a Dhaka-based agency anywhere between 4.8 and 6 lakh taka (RM20,630 to RM25,787) as recruitment fees, an additional 7,000 to 12,000 taka (RM300.85-RM515.75) for medical checkups and 4,000 taka (RM171.91) for biometrics…

For example, Ahmed was not informed about the nature of his job or which sector he would be employed in until two days before departure, when he was told he would be working for a construction company…

The woman called out their names from a list and seized their passports...

They arrived at the hotel at 4am the next day and didn’t receive any food until later that day…