“Our legs were chained and hands were also cuffed throughout the journey. There were three women and three children on board who were not cuffed,” said Daljit Singh, a native of Kurala Kalan village in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district, who was among 116 illegal Indian immigrants who were brought back in a US aircraft that landed at the Amritsar airport late on Saturday night.

Many of the deportees said their family arranged large sums of money by either selling or mortgaging their farm land or by borrowing from their relatives, only to send them to the US.