The
Statesman Delhi,
December 23, 1995
4
Children rescued from bondage
NEW
DELHI:
For them the day would start at 4 a.m. and end at 12 p.m. The
routine continued for three long years and so did their ordeal
before they were rescued by the Bonded Liberation Front on December
12.
Four boys, Ajay Parswan, 9, Mahendra Prajapati, 12, Basant Kumar,
13 and Ajay Mehto, 16, were bonded labourers at a carpet loom
owned by Motilal Gurah, in Handia.
These children
and their parents were lured with promises of a better tomorrow
and taken to Handia three years back.For
the past three years, the children were not allowed to go back
and neither were their parents allowed to meet them.
The
loom owner, before taking the boys along, had told their parents
that the money earned by them would be sent regularly. None of
the promises were kept and instead the children were subjected
to inhuman treatment. These boys were always watched over and
made to work in the loom after being locked from outside. Narrating
their harrowing experiences the boys said, "apart from being beaten
on minor pretexts we were not given food to eat and were woken
up abruptly in the middle of the night and forced to work."
Ajay,
the youngest of the lot said, "we were also made to work on Motilal's
field when we not working at the loom." The
children recuperating from the shock and trauma they suffered
during the past three years looked visibly relieved and were looking
forward to being with their parents again. All
of them expressed the hope of pursuing their studies and helping
their parents.
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