New York, June 15 (TIWN) The discovery of the body of a seven-year-old Indian girl in a treacherous desert area in the state of Arizona has put the spotlight on rising illegal immigrants from India trying to cross into the US through Mexico.

The Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) said on Friday that about 9,000 Indians were caught entering the US illegally last year, a dramatic increase from the 3,162 in 2017.   The CBP's statement comes after the girl's body was discovered on Thursday near the Lukeville and Quitobaquito Springs in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument biosphere reserve, a forbidding landscape in the dry and arid Arizona state.  The CBP said the girl died while she and four others, including an Indian woman and her eight-year-old daughter, were dropped off near the Mexico-US border by "human smugglers who ordered the group to cross (into the US) in the dangerous and austere location".