Diwakar Aggarwal, a director at BLS International, refused to respond to questions on the complaints. “This is all a conspiracy by our rival companies,” Aggarwal said on Friday afternoon.

“India is the back office of the world — but the agency didn’t have the backup needed to handle such a situation,” Badrinath said. “We didn’t know if our passports were lost. For a while, we were stateless, like Edward Snowden.”