Surat diamond polisher wanted better life for family, he’s now ‘missing’ in Russia

In June 2025, Ramnik Sakhwala flew to Moscow, hoping to find a job. The diamond polishing industry in his hometown Surat had been battered by the effects of the war in Ukraine, and Ramnik had his wife and teenage son to support.

So when his close friend Pankaj Jiwani, also a diamond polisher in Surat, landed a job in Russia, Ramnik decided to tag along, in case he got lucky as well.

It’s now almost four and a half months since Ramnik went “missing” in Russia. He last spoke with his family on June 24 this year. A member of the family approached the Surat police on Thursday (November 5).

The strains that the Russia-Ukraine war put on the diamond industry supply chain impacted the smaller units in Surat the most. Ramnik worked in one of those, and his employer had slashed his modest salary of Rs 35,000 by more than half, members of the family said. Ramnik’s son Hemil was 16, and still in school.

Pankaj and Ramnik landed in Moscow on June 13, 2025. The two friends rented a room, where they stayed for more than a month. Ramnik got himself a job in a mall in Moscow, his wife, Sheetal, told The Indian Express.

According to the family, things started to go wrong in March this year, when the 40- year-old diamond polisher lost his job at the mall.

“One day in mid-April, when he was returning home after searching for a job, he was arrested by the Russian police,” Sheetal said. According to Sheetal, the police gave Ramnik two options – he could either work for six months in the Russian Army, or he could go to jail. Ramnik, she said, chose the first option.

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“During my last conversation with Ramnik on June 24, he told me he was working as a member of the support staff supplying food to Russian army soldiers on the front. He told me that the commander of his team was a Sri Lankan named Arjun. Ramnik gave me Arjun’s phone number, and told me that he himself would be out of network coverage area for about 15-20 days,” Sheetal said.

Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, dozens of media reports have said foreign nationals, including Indians, have been lured or tricked into participating in the fighting.

In early October this year, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that it believed 259 Indian nationals had been recruited into the Russian armed forces, 139 of whom had ultimately returned to India.

At the end of September, the MEA had reiterated the “risks and dangers” involved, advised Indians to be cautious in “pursuing job opportunities abroad”, and to “not get lured by any job offers from unverified individuals”.

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Sheetal said that police had found Ramnik’s visa to have been “genuine”. She said that before he went missing, her husband had sent Rs 50,000 for their son’s education, and that in initial conversations with her, Arjun, the purported leader of Ramnik’s team, had assured her that he was well.

After a while, however, Arjun had stopped taking her calls, Sheetal said. “During our last conversation, Arjun said that Ramnik had been transferred to some other place. But we have not been in touch with him for more than four months, and we are worried,” she said.

The family has contacted both the Indian and Russian authorities, but has got no response yet, Sheetal said.

“We have emailed the Russian Consulate General in Mumbai, the Indian Embassy in Moscow, and the Ministry of External Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office in Delhi and requested them for help in finding Ramnik. So far, we have not received any reply. We are keeping our fingers crossed,” she said.

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Like thousands of other diamond workers, the family of Ramnik Sakhwala migrated to Surat, India’s diamond cutting-and-polishing hub through which more than 90% of the world’s uncut diamonds pass, from Amreli district in Saurashtra.

The Sakhwalas live in a two-storey house in the Katargam area. Ramnik’s father Kalubhai still lives in Amreli.

With no steady source of income, Sheetal has started sewing garments in order to make ends meet and pay her son’s school fees.

Ramnik’s younger brother Mahesh, who lives on the ground floor of the same house, said, “My elder brother studied up to Class 12 in Surat, and had worked for 18 years in the diamond industry. He used to earn a good salary earlier, but over the last few years, as the industry faced hard times, the company where he worked cut his salary to Rs 15,000. He worried about his family’s future, so he decided to go abroad to improve their life.”

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Mahesh said Ramnik had first tried to get a job in the diamond industry in Russia, which is the world’s largest producer of diamonds both by volume and production value. “But he had no references and did not get a job; so he started working in a mall in the storekeeping department,” Mahesh said.

Pankaj Jiwani, the friend with whom Ramnik went to Russia in 2025, said: “We stayed together in Moscow for a month and a half. Both of us looked forward to a bright future in Russia, but I was forced to return because the weather there did not suit me at all.”

Pankaj, who is now in Indonesia, told The Indian Express by phone that he had last spoken to Ramnik in the first week of June 2026. “He told me that he had joined the Russian army. I tried to speak to him several times after that, but his phone would always be unreachable,” Pankaj said.