It was a dream come true for 20-year-old Amanjot Singh Randhawa when he entered Germany after a nearly eight-month journey through treacherous mountains and jungles of Europe and Central Asia. That dream has turned out to be a nightmare now. “I have no money, no food and no place to sleep tonight. I don’t know anyone in Munich , except dozens of other illegal Punjabi immigrants Earlier, I had a part-time job in a grocery store in Berlin, but I had to move to Munich, a comparatively sleepy town, to escape the local police,” said Amanjot, resident of Punjab’s Mansa town, who has done a two-year diploma in plumbing from Industrial Training Institute in Chandigarh.“I am not earning more than €500 a month, but I need to dress properly and take care of my looks, otherwise I will not get a job in Munich and will easily come under police radar,” he said.Many Punjabi youths like him can be seen in the main city centre of Munich. Sporting stud earrings, gelled hair and trendy clothes, these youths do odd jobs and wait for the right time to go to France or Belgium, from where they will try their luck for UK.“The agent told us that we were flying to Antwerp (Belgium), from where we would board a connecting flight to London. But we landed in Astana (Kazakhstan). The agent took our passports at the airport and we travelled in a private bus. After covering 2,000 km with no access to food and water, we reached a dilapidated guesthouse in Oral town — close to Russian border,” said Jagdish Lal, 28, a resident of Nawanshahr, who started his journey with a group of 20 other Punjabi youths.After spending a week in the Oral guesthouse, Jagdish entered Russia through dense forests. “It was hit-and-trial. You will cross if you are lucky, otherwise you will get a police bullet. We have to spend many sleepless nights in forests, waiting for the right time to cross the border. There were told that if any cop challenged us, we should run towards Russia,” said Jagdish.In Moscow, Jagdish and his accomplices got their passports back with a road map of Europe. “A turbaned, Hindi-speaking man from Delhi accompanied us. In Moscow, he was replaced by a Russian man who didn’t speak English. From Russia, we entered Belarus, then Poland and finally Germany. We have been on the run for the last eight months and have no idea when we will reach London. It’s been six months since I last spoke to my family in Nawanshahr,” said Satjit Singh Sandhu, who was with Jagdish.Earlier, unscrupulous agents used the Middle-East route to take Punjabi youths to Europe. But now, they go via Russia. “We have heard that someone known as “Brar” is running the racket from Moscow. Punjabi youths are putting their lives in danger to reach Europe illegally. In most cases, they end up stranded in jungles or deserts. Ironically, they usually belong to belong to rich families in Punjab,” said Amanjot Kaur Ramoowalia, president of NGO Helping Hapless.