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When Shahnaz went into labour, her husband Abdul called a taxi to take them to the only medical facility accessible to them. "She was in a lot pain," he says. A 20-minute drive away, the clinic was in Shesh Pol village in Afghanistan's north-eastern Badakhshan province. It was where their two older children were born. Abdul sat next to Shahnaz comforting her as they drove over gravel tracks to reach help. "But when we reached the clinic, we saw that it was closed. I didn't know it had shut down," he said, his face crumpling with agony. The clinic in...

Gurpreet Singh was handcuffed, his legs shackled and a chain tied around his waist. He was led on to the tarmac in Texas by US Border Patrol, towards a waiting C-17 military transport aircraft. It was 3 February and, after a months-long journey, he realised his dream of living in America was over. He was being deported back to India. "It felt like the ground was slipping away from underneath my feet," he said. Gurpreet, 39, was one of thousands of Indians in recent years to have spent their life savings and crossed continents to enter the US illegally through...