Ashok Kumar Jha of Barmajhiya, Saptari, has nothing left on his face but deep emptiness and rage. His family has been financially devastated by the suffering inflicted by a labour broker in the name of foreign employment, and by a cruel twist of fate.
His son Suraj Jha had dreamed of working as a delivery boy in Romania, earning around Rs 1.25 lakh a month and lifting his family out of poverty. Instead, Suraj today finds himself not in Romania, but forced to sweat in the deserts of Qatar, having given up on that dream.
The family earned nothing close to what was hoped for, and the money saved over years of hard work was lost entirely. Worse still, because of the broker’s cruelty, Suraj suffered the greatest loss of his life; he could not see his mother’s face one final time before she died.
The Jha family’s ordeal began three years ago, when Suraj was introduced to an agent named Bal Ram Lama through a relative. Lama showed him lofty dreams.
Ashok Kumar has been making trips to Kathmandu to seek justice for his defrauded son. Carrying a bag full of documents, he arrived at the Department of Foreign Employment with the hope that the new government might finally deliver justice.
“My son was cheated, my family has been ruined, and now when I come here to file a case, nobody listens to my pain; who do I tell my sorrow to?” he says to Onlinekhabar, standing at the department’s case division window.
He then opened up and shared his story in full.
In October 2024, Suraj met Balram Lama through a contact. Lama lured Suraj and his family with promises of good pay and benefits in Romania.
“The work will come together, but you’ll have to keep paying,” Lama had told Ashok Kumar at the outset.
First, Suraj was called to Kathmandu under the pretext of a medical examination, and Rs 50,000 was taken. Then, citing various paperwork requirements, Rs 2.5 lakh was demanded, and the family handed over the amount. Work permits and documents were repeatedly dangled in front of Suraj to keep him strung along.
The fraud reached its most brutal point around when Lama pressured Suraj to come to Delhi, saying his visa had been approved. But at that very moment, Suraj’s mother was critically ill, fighting for her life in the ICU of a hospital in Dharan.
Seeing his mother’s condition, Suraj pleaded with the broker, “My mother is sick, I’m at the hospital in Dharan, let’s go in two or three days.” But Lama refused.
The broker threatened that his visa would be cancelled.
“No, your visa will be cancelled, your money will be gone, don’t come crying to me later,” he warned.
Fearing the loss of his visa, Suraj agreed to go to Delhi and left his mother’s care in the hands of his father. His father Ashok too, afraid of losing the hundreds of thousands of rupees borrowed and collected, reluctantly told his son, “Alright, she’s getting treatment at the hospital, you go.”
Before departing for Delhi, Lama took another Rs 3,00,000 in cash, and after Suraj arrived in Kathmandu, he extracted a further Rs 4,00,000 in instalments of Rs 80,000 and Rs 1,00,000.
Suraj was taken to Delhi.
Lama told him, “Get your bags ready, the flight is in three or four days.”
That flight never came. In a cruelly timed twist of fate, on the very day Suraj was cooped up in a Delhi room, his mother passed away at the Dharan hospital.
Even then, when Suraj asked to return for his mother’s last rites, the broker refused. A few days later, Lama told him over the phone, “Your visa has been cancelled, I’ll return your money within a month.”
From that day, Bal Ram Lama went completely silent. After stringing the family along for three years and stealing hundreds and thousands of rupees, he disappeared after that incident. There has been no trace of him since.
According to Ashok, the broker had cleverly taken most of the money in cash. However, clear banking evidence exists of Rs 3,20,000 being transferred to the account of a woman named Srijana Theeng. Her mobile number is available, but she too has gone unreachable.
“For three years we were treated like toys. Now, defeated, I’ve come here to file a case,” Ashok says.
The fraud not only destroyed the family financially but also mentally. Crushed by debt and the broker’s betrayal, Suraj finally gave up on Romania. To pay off the loans and try to fix the family’s finances, he fled to Qatar, a defeat in itself. He has been working there for the past year.
He had wanted to earn a respectable living as a delivery boy in Romania, doing overtime. Today, he is selling his labour in the scorching heat of the Gulf.
Ashok from Barmajhiya continues to make rounds at the department seeking justice.
“My son’s life has been ruined, yes, but that swindler Bal Ram Lama and Srijana Theeng must be held accountable. We must get our money back,” he says.
