With no job prospects in rural India, two young men decided to try their luck as sailors. Independently, they both signed up and completed seafarer courses — Dillip Kapoor* at a maritime college in Lucknow, Raj Kumar* in Noida, Delhi.
They would meet on an abandoned ship in Durban harbour, left penniless by a crooked owner and his agents and eventually arrested and jailed for the expiry of their visas. They were victims of human trafficking.
Their situation is a synecdoche for that of thousands of young men caught in global marine trafficking scams by corrupt agents pocketing usurious upfront payments from the poorest of the poor, and abandoning youngsters to appalling conditions and sometimes death. 
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Always selected from countries with high unemployment and an over-supply of labour, they are ripe for exploitation. Desperate for any sort of work, and commercially naïve, they fall prey to unscrupulous ship owners.
“Once the (seafarer) course is completed,” Kapoor says through an interpreter, “to obtain a 12-month contract it is necessary to register with a crewing agent. They act as agents on behalf of ship owners all around the world.”