When Mohammad Afzal, a textile mill worker, was told that he could get better employment and also a chance to perform umrah, he jumped at the opportunity. Poor and uneducated, he had little idea what was happening and happily went off with Mohammad Arshad, a man who claimed to be an overseas employment agent.

That was the last his wife Razia saw of him, 10 years ago.

“He called after four months from Saudi Arabia, saying he was in jail on a charge of drug trafficking,” she says. Living in a simple brick house with her brother, she owns nothing of her own anymore.

“I sold everything right down to my sewing machine,” she says. “My youngest son Ramish, who was only a few months when his father left, fell ill, and I sold all my jewellery to pay for the medical expenses but could not save him.” She runs her finger on the photo of a grinning child as if caressing his face.

Afzal’s legal documents say that after he paid Arshad money for the passport and visa, the latter took him to an unknown place in Mardan. There, Afzal was given an injection that made him drowsy, and in this state he was forced to ingest heroin capsules. Razia says that it was a heavily guarded building and he was starved for three days, and then dropped off at the airport in a car with tinted windows.