“Even if I am close to death, I will not come back here,” 23-year-old Rakesh*, who has two children aged three and four, said. “I will work in my fields or find some work in my village,” he added. Rakesh was among five bonded labourers who were rescued from a borewell digging unit in Sahakar Nagar, a residential suburb in Bengaluru based on a tip-off. According to authorities, the five men; aged between 18 to 27, are Adivasis belonging to the Gond tribe in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul district.
The case came to light when Jan Sahas, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) working on issues of human trafficking and bonded labour in Madhya Pradesh received information about the plight of these workers through their helpline number. The District Magistrate of Betul was alerted about the situation, who in turn contacted the Bengaluru Urban District Deputy Commissioner.
Then, a group of police personnel along with Tahsildar Raghu Murthy and the International Justice Mission (IJM), an NGO, rescued the five workers.
Speaking about the incident in a video, the Tahsildar said that a man identified as Kempanna had brought the Adivasis from Madhya Pradesh on the promise of a job. He added that the men were not paid for their labor and would only be provided with the scarcest of rations, and no proper accommodation.
According to authorities, four of the workers had been working at the borewell unit since November 2019 while one worker had joined them in June 2020. The first batch of four workers, all friends, got to know about the work in Bengaluru when the borewell unit owner’s visiting card was passed on to them in their village. They called the owner to enquire about the job, for which he had promised them Rs 10,000 as a monthly salary. They decided to travel to Bengaluru and were picked up at the railway station by the owner. The last worker was told about the job by a friend and he was also promised the same salary and reached Bengaluru in June, investigation officials said.
The Tahsildar said that the workers were only given Rs 200 to 1,000 each, occasionally, only if they were in dire need of something. They were forced to live in a truck in bad conditions. They were given rations like rice, dal and vegetables by the owner periodically and a stove for cooking.
The government official also said that the workers were not even allowed to go back to their village as the owner kept insisting that they had to stay with him until he found a replacement for them.
A case was registered against the owner of the borewell company under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 at the Kodigehalli Police Station on August 10. The District Administration then began the process of issuing release certificates to the five men and sending them back home.
“My family has three acres of land where we grow corn, soybean, and rice. I came here because I was in need of some money to buy a motor for my own borewell in my land and to save some money for my children’s education but we were cheated here. I hope I get the wages for the months that I worked here,” Rakesh said.