Children hit with hammer, made to work for 22 hours
NEWDELHI: Shyam (10) is unable to walk properly after four years of sitting at just one place 22 hours a day. Lucky (10), could not open his eyes when he saw the sunlight first time in four years. They were beaten with hammers for reasons such as cooking extra rice, dozing off at work and even trying to go to the washroom during work.
Their job was to cut threads of jeans and pack it. The task was to pack 10 pieces in 10 minutes and the one who finished last used to be beaten with a hammer by the employer. The tale of extreme torture was disclosed by the 26 boys, in the age group of 8 to 13, who were rescued from a jeans factory in northeast Delhi’s Seelampur area last month.
“We were allowed to sleep at 5 am and the employer used to wake us up at 7 am. In between work, if we fell asleep, he used to wake us up by hitting us with a hammer. For four years, we were having two meals in a day - potato and rice. The menu never changed and we were not allowed to go out of the room even for a second,” said Raheem, a 7-yearold boy, who was brought in to the factory six months ago.
Shyam, who has seen at least five new boys coming every month, could not move on his own when he was rescued. “He had to be lifted. Now, we are giving him physiotherapy and he has started moving his feet. Almost every boy has injury marks on their body and has vitamin deficiency. We have never seen this kind of torture in our life,” said a member of Bachpan Bachao Andolan, an NGO run by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi. The NGO runs a children home ‘Mukti Ashram’ in north Delhi’s Burari, where these boys are staying and getting treatment so that they can lead a normal life.
“We were kept in a small room and I have not seen the sunlight in four years. When, I was rescued, I could not open my eyes as I was not used to it. We were not allowed to take bath or go to washroom since every day we used to pack 5,000 pieces of jeans,” said Lucky.
All boys are from Motihari district of Bihar and were brought to Delhi around six months ago.
“I am furious. Twenty six child slaves were rescued and most of them have not even seen daylight in four years. I recall a similar case from 1983 when all 27 children we freed from the carpet industry in Mirzapur were beaten, branded, hanged upside down on trees,” said Satyarthi.