Sat, 7 Nov, 2026, 05:23 am
Reported by The Indian Express
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.
