‘He’s the Owner’: How Telangana Buried Peddapalli Bonded Labour Case

For a year and a half, two Dalit families from Chhattisgarh loaded and stacked bricks at a kiln in Peddapalli, Telangana without being paid a wage. There were 11 of them, and seven were children. They say they were beaten and abused, that the children were kept loading bricks until midnight, and that a minor girl, aged 17, was trafficked to Raipur to do housework at the home of the kiln operator’s daughter.

Also Read:  A 16-Year Search, 72 Freed From Bonded Labour, and Justice on Hold

On 11 November, three days after a detailed complaint of bonded labour reached the district administration in Peddapalli, an assistant labour officer arrived at the kiln with one junior assistant. The families were not declared bonded labourers. No release certificates were issued and no FIR was registered. They were driven to the railway station in the kiln operator’s own tractor, carrying ₹10,000 per family that the officer had told the operator to hand over. At the next station, the families say, the operator’s men boarded the train with their faces covered, beat them, and took the money and their phones away.

The Probe has spoken to both families, to the activists who raised the alarm, to the man who runs the kiln and to the officer who carried out the "so called" rescue operation. The two men accused of failing these families confirmed much of what the families say. All of this happened nine days after the Supreme Court told every state in the country, Telangana included, that freedom from bondage “cannot be secured by the act of rescue alone”.

Peddapalli is a district headquarters town in northern Telangana, on the main railway line that connects the south of India to Nagpur and Delhi. The countryside around it is dotted with brick kilns that depend on migrant families brought in from Odisha and Chhattisgarh. The kiln at the centre of this case stands in Rangapur village and stamps its bricks with the letters MTN.

“They Gave Us 60,000 Rupees and Bought Our Whole Family”

Sukhram Tandan, 48, comes from Janjgir-Champa district in Chhattisgarh. Lokesh Khunte, 47, is from Sakti district in the same state. According to a complaint filed by the National Campaign Committee for Eradication of Bonded Labour (NCCEBL), a recruiter named Rukhmani Devi brought both families to Peddapalli in Telangana, where the kiln operator advanced ₹60,000 to Sukhram and ₹80,000 to Lokesh. The complaint says those advances became the debt that held them there in bondage.

“They gave us 60,000 rupees, and in return they bought our whole family,” Sukhram told The Probe. “After that they made us work at the brick kiln for a year and a half without wages. There are five of us: my wife Ramayan, our three daughters and me. They made us work, and every week they gave us around 400 rupees, just enough to eat.”

Lokesh said the same. “We worked there for a year and a half and did not get a single paisa in wages. Even the government officials who came to rescue us did nothing at all to help us.”

A 14-year-old girl from one of the families described what the work was like for the children. “They made us do every kind of work. Even at 11 or 12 at night, they would still have us loading. If we didn’t go, he would abuse us filthily. My younger sisters were made to work too. He gave us nothing at all, and still he beat us and made us work.”

The Probe has seen photographs and videos that the workers recorded on their own phones in the last week of October. One video shows a girl bent over a stack of fired bricks, loading them by hand. Another shows a teenage girl lying limp on the ground at the kiln while a boy fans her and a woman holds her head. NCCEBL’s complaint says children at the kiln “frequently become unconscious while working”. The Probe is withholding the children’s names and faces.

Also Read:  Human Trafficking: Indian Workers Trapped in Bonded Labour in Malaysia

The Girl Who Was Sent to Raipur

The gravest allegation concerns a 17-year-old girl from one of the two families. She told The Probe that the kiln operator Jafar sent her to Raipur to work in his family’s house.

“It was against my will and against my parents’ will,” she said. “When my mother objected, he told her directly, ‘If you make too much noise, I’ll slit your throat and throw you right here,’ and he abused her filthily. So I was forced to go to Raipur. I worked there for about seven or eight days. I looked after a child, swept, mopped and washed dishes. I was never paid for the work I did, either at the brick kiln or in Raipur.”

She was sent back to her village only after officials arrived at the kiln in Telangana.

Nirmal Gorana, the convener of NCCEBL, sent the complaint by email to the Collector of Telangana’s Peddapalli district on the evening of 8 November, with a copy to the National Human Rights Commission. It named the families, the advances, the unpaid wages, the children and the girl sent to Raipur. It asked for a joint rescue team, an FIR and release certificates.

“Not one provision of the law was used,” Gorana said speaking to The Probe. “The Bonded Labour Act was not invoked. No case of trafficking was registered under Section 143 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. All 11 of these people belong to the Scheduled Castes, so Section 3 of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act also applies, because forcing a Dalit into bonded labour is itself an offence under that law. It is a non-bailable offence. None of it was registered.”

A Phone Call From a Tractor Heading Towards the Jungle

On the day of the rescue, the kiln operator appears to have known the officials were coming. Rameshwar, a social activist who works closely with Nirmal Gorana and belongs to the Chhattisgarhiya Banihar Sangh, a workers’ union in Chhattisgarh, received a call from one of the girls.

“She said, ‘Bhaiya, they’re forcing all of us onto a tractor and taking us away from here,’” Rameshwar recalled. “I told her to ask them where they were being taken. She said, ‘They say they’re taking us to the market, but there is no market this way. They’re taking us towards the jungle.’ She was crying as we talked.”

Ramayan, Sukhram’s wife, said the families were brought back to the kiln when the officials turned up. “Two people came to rescue us. The officials made us sign a document. I don’t know what was written in it. They put us in Jafar’s tractor and dropped us at the railway station.”

Gorana said the families had been warned in advance not to sign a blank sheet, and refused. “Then they were told, ‘If you want to go home, you will have to sign.’ Since they would not sign a blank sheet, the officials wrote something on it first. The families do not know the language there, and nobody read it out to them. They were only told, ‘This says you are going home.’”

The 14-year-old said the officials told her to put her phone away. “They said, ‘Don’t make any videos of me. Don’t phone anyone.’ We told them, ‘Don’t put us on the train at Peddapalli station. Put us on at another station, because Jafar’s men will come after us.’ But they put us on the train at Peddapalli.”

“As soon as the train reached the next station, three of the munshi’s men got on like thieves, with their faces covered,” the girl said. “They beat us and took everything: my mobile, Ramayan’s mobile, and the 10,000 rupees each family had been given.” Rameshwar said the attackers told other passengers the families were “running away after robbing the owner’s money”, and so none of the co-passengers intervened. The families reached their villages two days later, empty-handed. After a year and a half of work, they came home with no wages, no money and no phones. Everything of value they had was taken from them on the train.

The next morning, a message forwarded to Gorana from a number saved on his phone as the Peddapalli district magistrate’s read: “The interstate migrant workers of 2 families safely departed to their own state Chattisgarh sir. Detail report will be submitted soon sir.” It came with a photograph of the families on the platform at night. Gorana replied within minutes: “This is bonded labour matter. Please share the release order.” Gorana says no release order has been sent to him since.

Also Read:  Moga District Under NHRC Lens for Shielding Bonded Labour Exploiters

“Business Isn’t Done by Slitting Throats”

The Probe called two numbers advertised for MTN Bricks, which sells itself online as “the strong & quality brick in Telangana”. On the second number, a man first confirmed he was Mohammad Jafar, the owner. When asked about unpaid wages, he said he was in fact the driver, Mohsin, and that Jafar was in a hospital in Hyderabad. He then connected a second man on a conference call.

That man identified himself as Jafar. He said he was a partner in the kiln and named a Mujahid Khan as its owner, which The Probe has not been able to verify independently. He said he had given the families advances.

Asked whether they were paid wages, Jafar said: “In a week I gave ₹500 for expenses, for food expenses.” He said accounts were settled “once every six months” and that the full record was in his book. He could not say how much either family had received in total. 

He denied that children worked. “We don’t make children work. We tell the parents, ‘Don’t do this.’ When we say it, they don’t listen.”

On the 17-year-old, he said: “Our daughter lives there. Work is going on at our house there. So she was sent there for housework.” He denied threatening her mother. “We are business people. Business isn’t done by slitting throats, is it, madam?”

He confirmed that during the rescue, he paid ₹10,000 to each family and that they left in his vehicle. “We saw to it and sent them in our tractor.” Of the attack on the train, he said: “I don’t know anything about that.”

“How Is He a Trafficker? He’s the Owner”

The man the Peddapalli administration sent to deal with a complaint of bonded labour was Kadam Anil, the district’s Assistant Labour Officer. He confirmed to The Probe that he carried out the operation and that the families had been sent away. “They’ve gone to their village,” he said.

Asked who was on the rescue team, he said: “I was alone.” When told the families had seen two men, he corrected himself. “My assistant was there. A junior assistant.”

That was the entire team. The central government’s Standard Operating Procedure for the rescue of bonded labourers says a rescue team “shall be multi-disciplinary”. It must include a representative of the district magistrate with powers under the Bonded Labour Act, a police officer nominated by the Superintendent of Police, enough police to secure the premises, two or more women officers, a photographer, two independent witnesses and a representative of a civil society organisation. The labour officer is one member of that team. In Peddapalli, he was the team.

Why did he go alone? “Immediately I got a call from the Collector: ‘Go there, carry out the rescue and send them off,’” he said.

He was not walking in blind. The operation followed the written complaint that Nirmal Gorana sent to the Collector on 8 November. It named both families and set out the advances of ₹60,000 and ₹80,000, a year and a half of unpaid work, children made to work at the kiln and a 17-year-old girl trafficked to Raipur. It asked for a joint rescue team, for statements to be recorded away from the employer, and for the complaint to be kept confidential so that the kiln owner would not be warned before the rescue.

Anil brushed it aside. “It came out of Delhi, the complaint was made from there. So what can I say about that? I’m here on the spot.” He said it had reached him as no more than “a suspicion”.

On the spot, he reached his verdict. “They weren’t bonded labour. They weren’t, madam, they weren’t.”

How did he establish that? “After I went there on the spot, they said, ‘We don’t want to work here, we’ll leave.’ I said, ‘All right, go,’ and sent them off. That’s all.” His inquiry, by his own account, was a conversation. “I asked them. I talked to them for 15 minutes, half an hour.” He said the families told him they had been paid in full. When The Probe put it to him that he had no document showing that a single rupee of wages was paid in a year and a half, he agreed. “No, there isn’t. There’s no written record kept there, madam.”

The rules required the opposite. The same procedure directs the rescue team to seize and photograph wage slips, registers, muster rolls, ledgers and bond agreements, and to question workers about the advance, their wages and their freedom to leave “in the absence of the offender”. Section 15 of the Bonded Labour Act goes further. When a worker says a debt is a bonded debt, the burden of proving otherwise lies on the creditor. Anil checked no record and placed no burden on anyone. 

Anil insists the families never told him they were in bondage. “No, no, they didn’t say anything. If they’re saying it after coming to you, I can’t do anything about it.” And again: “They tell you one thing in front of you, and they tell me another thing in front of me. What can I do about that?”

Every adult and child The Probe spoke to from the two families says the reverse. They say they told the officials they were held against their will, beaten and never paid. They say they were made to sign a paper in a language they cannot read, were told they could not go home unless they signed, and do not know whether a word of what they said was written down. Anil said he recorded their statements. Asked if there was a video, he said: “Not a video. It’s with a photo, madam.”

He also suggested the workers should have come forward one by one. “That complaint should be given to me individually, saying ‘bonded labour’. You know: ‘I am a bonded labourer. I have been held captive here.’” The law asks no such thing of a bonded labourer. Section 12 of the Act makes it the duty of the district magistrate and his officers to inquire whether bonded labour, or any other form of forced labour, is being enforced.

“I’m a Labour Officer. I Don’t Have a Vehicle. I Don’t Have Anything”

On the tractor, the officer confirms what Gorana, the families and the kiln operator all say. Asked how he could send the families to the station in the vehicle of the man they accuse of trafficking a child, he said: “How is he a trafficker, madam? He’s the owner.”

“Where would I bring a vehicle from? It was about 10, 15 kilometres away. I took his vehicle and sent them in it,” he said. “Look, madam, I’m a labour officer. I don’t have a vehicle. I don’t have anything.” It was dark by then. “Taking the owner’s driver, I went and dropped them at the railway station.”

So an officer of the Telangana government set out to free suspected bonded labourers without a vehicle, without police and without a plan to get them out. He then seated them in the tractor of the very man they had accused, with that man’s driver at the wheel. The procedure says rescued workers must be separated from the accused and taken to a safe location, that police must accompany them when they are sent home, and that “at all times” the accused must be kept from any contact with them. The families say they begged not to be put on the train at Peddapalli. They were robbed at the next station. Asked about it, Anil said: “No, I don’t know.”

He confirms the money too. “I forced the owner: ‘Give money, these are poor people. Give them money, whatever it is, give it.’ I said that, so he gave it.”

The Probe could find no provision of law that lets an official settle a bonded labour complaint by having the accused employer hand over cash. What the law does provide is immediate assistance of up to ₹30,000 for each rescued person, paid by the district administration, and wage recovery proceedings, which the procedure assigns to the labour officer himself. The state spent nothing on these 11 people. Their wages for a year and a half were never calculated.

On the 17-year-old girl, the accused and the victim agree on the central fact. Jafar told The Probe he sent her to his daughter’s house in Raipur for housework. The girl says she was sent against her will after her mother was threatened with having her throat slit. The officer’s response was to blame her parents. “They should complain at the police station that ‘my child has been trafficked’. They should have said it themselves.” Of Jafar, he asked: “How can I call him a criminal?” 

Would he act now, on the photographs, the videos and the families’ testimony? “What can I do? After they’ve left here, what can I do, madam?” Then he disowned the subject altogether. “The Revenue Department does bonded labour. I’m a labour officer. Bonded labour isn’t mine. I can’t do it.” Why, then, did he go? “I went on the Collector’s order.”

Of the families, he said: “Now, after coming to you, they’re lying. What can I do?”

The operation was botched at every stage. Kadam Anil says bonded labour is not his department. Yet after talking to the families for half an hour at most, he decided on the spot that they were not bonded labourers. He did not check the kiln’s records or call the police. He sent the families to the station in the tractor of the man they had accused.

His conduct should be investigated. The Collector’s role needs to be examined too. He sent a single labour officer to act on a bonded labour complaint. The next morning, a message from the district magistrate’s number told the complainant that the families had “safely departed”.

“This Is a Mockery of the System”

Gorana said the officer’s own account shows how far the operation strayed from the law. “A rescue under the Bonded Labour Act is not something a labour officer does alone with one assistant. The law gives every district a vigilance committee, chaired by the district magistrate. Here one officer went with a junior assistant.”

“The officer himself admits that bonded labour is not his department,” he said. “So why was he sent? And how can the district magistrate accept a report from an officer who says the subject is not his responsibility?”

He said the children should have been produced before the Child Welfare Committee within 24 hours, and that the unpaid wages should have been recovered on the spot. “This is a case of child labour and human trafficking as well. The children from the two families were working alongside their parents. The girl says she was trafficked. The kiln operator himself admits he sent this minor girl to Raipur. Then how is it that no trafficking case has been registered? This is a mockery of the system. Action must be taken against this officer.”

“The district magistrate has not even been able to record this as a case of bonded labour,” Gorana said. “Without release certificates they will not be rehabilitated, and they will never get any compensation. The oppressors in this case are still roaming free.”

What the Law Promised These Families

Parliament abolished bonded labour in 1976. The Act cancels every debt that binds a worker and makes the district magistrate responsible for identifying, freeing and rehabilitating bonded labourers. A central scheme entitles each rescued person to immediate assistance of up to ₹30,000, followed by rehabilitation of ₹1 lakh for men and ₹2 lakh for women and children.

On 2 November, in Surendra Manjhi v Union of India, the Supreme Court directed that complaints be verified ordinarily within 24 hours, that release certificates follow within 24 hours of a finding of bondage, and that immediate aid be paid within seven days of the certificate. Statements must be recorded with appropriate safeguards, and release certificates and information about entitlements must be given in a language the rescued person understands. “Rehabilitation delayed may, in substance, amount to rehabilitation denied,” the court said. Telangana, like every state, has six months to put the new procedure in place, but the order is explicit that this does not suspend any duty that already exists under the law.

The failure is not confined to one kiln. Telangana’s brick kilns have produced such cases before. In May this year, 518 people, more than 200 of them children, were freed from brick kilns in Nizamabad district. Fifteen workers from Odisha’s Balangir district were freed from another brick kiln in Peddapalli district in an earlier case. Jafar told The Probe that 150 to 200 labourers work at his kiln. Only these two families were taken out.

Beyond Telangana, across India, the gap is wider still. In 2016 the Union government set itself the target of freeing 1.84 crore bonded labourers by 2030. Government data shows that fewer than 5,000 have been released in an average year since. Walk Free’s Global Slavery Index estimates that 11 million people in India live in modern slavery, more than in any other country. India ratified the International Labour Organisation’s Forced Labour Convention in 1954, and Article 23 of its own Constitution has prohibited forced labour since 1950.

The Probe called Peddapalli District Collector Koya Sree Harsha twice on 14 November, and he did not take the calls. Detailed questions were then sent to him on WhatsApp and by email. His response will be added to this story when it is received.

The two families are back in Chhattisgarh. They have no wages for a year and a half of work, no release certificates and no phones. Bonded labour was outlawed in this country half a century ago, and Telangana has yet to say whether the law applies to them.