Baghdad: "I am shattered after what has happened to me and all of us here," says Baljendra Singh, sitting on a wooden bench in one of the corner rooms of the embassy.

Forty-three-year-old Singh, an Indian Sikh farmer from Punjab, is a broken man.

Singh, along with dozens of other Indians, is sheltering in his embassy in Baghdad after spending more than two months in Iraqi jails for entering the country illegally.

"We have been waiting for the last 20 days in this room, waiting to go back home after spending months in Iraqi border jails," he said.

Duped by their Indian agents, these unemployed men were arrested by the Syrian authorities in May while trying to enter the country illegally on their way to Lebanon and Greece.

The Syrians jailed them for a day before dumping them over the border in Iraq, where they were locked up for more than two months, before the Indian embassy learned of them, the men said.

The group arrived in Amman in May on a tourist visa and were driven into Iraq by another agent, who later smuggled them into Syria.

"But on the Syrian border our vehicle broke down and the agent's man left us stranded," Singh told.

"The Syrian police caught us and put us in jail. They looted us and took all the good clothes and other items we had and after a day pushed us into Iraq, where the Iraqi police arrested us."

Like thousands of illegal migrants, the group was bound for Greece and other European destinations in the hope of earning a livelihood to support their families back home.

"But now we pray only to go back home somehow," said 24-year-old Shyam Lal, who closed his tea stall in India to go to Europe.

"Our families are worried as we were not able to contact them for two months when we were in jail," Lal said.

"It was this dream I had. I thought even I could have those big cars and a good house if I work abroad, and so I came."

He paid around Rs 70,000 to agents in India for a single-entry visa to Jordan. "The agent promised once we were there (Jordan) we will be taken safely to Lebanon or Greece where there were good jobs," Lal said.

Officials at the Indian embassy said nearly 100 Indians had been arrested in the last two months by Iraqi and Syrian authorities for illegal entry.

"It is such an embarrassment. On one hand we send rockets and on the other we have such cases of illegal human trafficking. People back home who indulge in such crimes should be punished," one official said.

The terrified group does not dare step outside the embassy compound for fear of being kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents.