In October last year, David Moothappan saw an ad on Facebook offering a job as a security guard in Russia. The promised monthly salary of 204,000 rubles ($2,201) seemed like a lot for the fisherman who dropped out of school from the southern Indian state of Kerala. Weeks later, Moothappan, 23, found himself on the front lines of the war in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

“It’s death and destruction everywhere,” he says, when asked about his time there. He and another man from Kerala managed to return home last week. They are among several Indians tricked by agents into fighting for Russian forces in the country’s war with Ukraine in recent months. Some have managed to return home, but others are still trapped in Russia.

Most of them come from poor families and were lured with the promise of work, sometimes as “helpers” in the Russian army. At least two Indians have died in the war so far. India’s foreign ministry has said it is “pressing very hard with the Russian authorities” to bring back its citizens who have been tricked into fighting in the war. Last week, foreign minister S Jaishankar called it “a matter of very, very deep concern” for India.

Mr Moothappan is relieved to be back home in the fishing village of Pozhiyoor in Kerala, but says he cannot forget what he saw in the war. “There were body parts scattered all over the ground,” he says. Worried, he started vomiting and almost fainted. “Soon, the Russian officer commanding us told me to go back to the camp. It took me hours to recover,” he told the BBC.

He says he broke his leg around Christmas while fighting in a “faraway place” – his family, he says, were unaware of the situation at the time. Moothappan spent two and a half months in various hospitals in Luhansk, Volgograd and Rostov before partially recovering. In March, a group of Indians helped him reach the country’s embassy in Moscow, which then arranged for him to return home.