Farm bondage

At 1 am on January 1, an hour into the new year, 24 men, women and children returned to their obscure village in Bihar’s Sitamarhi district on the Indo-Nepal border after a terrifying ordeal in Punjab — bruised and battered, but finally free.

Four months earlier, in their desperation to escape the endless cycle of poverty, they had boarded a bus on the promise of a better future in Punjab’s potato fields by an agent, Bigan Rai. They term him a butcher now.

“Mitti kha ke jee lenge, par Punjab vapis nahi jayenge (We will survive by eating mud, but won’t go back to Punjab),” says Theku Paswan (45), who, along with the others, was employed at Pehelwan Farms in Brindpur, in the heart of Kapurthala’s prosperous potato belt.

The 24 were among the 30 persons, including 11 children, who were rescued from the farm, exposing the dark underbelly of this otherwise celebrated agrarian belt.

Most of those rescued last year were from villages in the Parihar, Sonbarsa and Sursand blocks in Bihar. With small landholdings and rampant poverty, they were lured into agreeing to employment opportunities in Punjab. The men were promised Rs 15,000 and women Rs 12,000 per month as wages.

The rescued men, women and children claim they were subjected to torture and cruelty on a routine basis.

Paswan alleges, “We thought we will earn well, so we went with Bigan in August. We didn’t know we had been hired by a butcher. Bigan and a turbaned man were the most heartless. Adults and children were made to work from 4 am to 7 pm. We were beaten up if we put too much or too little water in the fields, or asked to go out. Denied toilet breaks, we were given meals only twice a day, and always potatoes and soya bean. We worked in the cold, rain and sun until we just couldn’t do it anymore. We were all separated from our families. My daughter was kicked and grandson beaten up. If we had been together, some of us may still have fought back.”

He claims some people also ran away from the farms but most stayed put, scared of the beatings if they were caught.

Madan Lal, who went to work with his wife, alleged he was beaten up with a hoe.

Since 2020, cases involving the rescue of 64 child labourers have been reported from various villages in Doaba’s potato belt.

With the help of activists from the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, a stream of impoverished parents from Bihar has been coming to Punjab farms each year — on the lookout for their “enslaved” children. While at least four FIRs have been registered in Bihar against the agents, the administration has failed to fix accountability of the farm owners.

While 38 children were rescued from the potato fields in Jalandhar’s Pholariwal village in December 2020, 13 were freed from Sidhwa Dona village, Kapurthala, on April 6, 2022. A 12-year-old Sitamarhi-based boy was rescued in October 2022 from Sial village in Kapurthala, while a child was rescued during the raid on November 21 last year at Pehelwan Farms in the same village. On December 29, 11 children (eight boys and three girls; three of them from Nepal) were rescued from the farm.

In Punjab, an FIR was registered against Major Singh and Resham Singh on April 30, 2022, following the Sidhwa Dona rescue. The owners were arrested, but later got out on bail. Last year, an FIR was registered against Teja Singh (82), owner of Pehalwan Farms, under Section 3 of the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act, 1986, at Sadar police station, Kapurthala.

The key accused, agent Bigan Rai, is believed to have trafficked at least 25 children from Bihar since 2022 and is absconding. He is wanted for crimes such as wrongful confinement, wrongful restraint, criminal conspiracy, sexual assault and prostitution.

Though he was arrested in Bihar in 2022, Bigan managed to get bail. He has been named in all four FIRs registered in Bihar since 2022. Despite his notorious child trafficking track record, there isn’t a single FIR against him in Punjab as yet. Though the police say a chargesheet is under process, Bigan managed to flit in and out of farms with ease despite his criminal antecedents.

Curiously, FIRs in Punjab have been registered under bailable offences, providing a window to the farm owners to go scot-free. All of them, as expected, claim innocence about the activities at their farms.

Tarsem Peter, president of Pendu Mazdoor Union, says the implementation of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979, which stipulates a detailed process for owners and firms employing migrant labourers, lies largely ignored in the state. “The contractors and labourers need to be registered here and in the home state and the contractor himself must have a licence. But, clearly, none of these formalities are being followed. The labour officers are responsible for punishing those without a licence. Additionally, there are sub-divisional committees constituted to check bonded labour, which do not even hold meetings. We have advocated for these committees at the tehsil and village levels as well,” he adds.

Demanding accountability, Peter says, “Sadly, all attempts are made to protect the offenders, especially powerful landowners.”

The legislation also stipulates passbooks for each worker, displacement allowances and humane working conditions. In the Pehelwan Farms case, workers alleged they weren’t paid even minimum wages.

Bachpan Bachao Andolan assistant project officer Mukund Chaudhary and state coordinator Yadvinder Singh allege, “It’s questionable how a contractor who faces charges was able to take so many people from Bihar to Punjab again. His credentials and licences should have been checked in Bihar and Punjab. Three children without any guardians continued working at a farm for months, and it escaped any scrutiny.”

Government departments, meanwhile, are content passing the buck. Assistant Labour Commissioner, Kapurthala, Santokh Singh, said, “We have data regarding construction labourers, not farm labourers. None of the farmers is supposed to get labourers registered with us, only factory owners are. Farm labour is registered under the Agriculture Department.”

Chief Agricultural Officer, Kapurthala, Dr Balbir Chand, said, “We do not have information regarding the labourers in the potato belt. It’s with the Labour Department.”

A Kapurthala-based expert, advocate TS Dhillon, says, “One of the loopholes in the law itself is that the aspect of bonded labour in factories is well defined while it is open-ended regarding those exploited in farms. However, if an FIR for offences as strong as illegal confinement and sexual abuse has been registered in Bihar, there is no reason why the same FIR can’t be registered at another place — especially if the offender has been charged multiple times and at multiple places. Also, apart from the abuser, the owner of the place where the offence took place cannot escape responsibility. Thirdly, the Labour Department is clearly responsible for the lack of proper surveillance and checks on labour being employed at farms.”

Kapurthala SSP Gaurav Toora says, “An FIR had already been registered against the farm owner following the November 21 raid. There will be additional charges in the detailed chargesheet being filed regarding that FIR. Only one FIR is filed for one incident. Since the other FIRs had already been registered at Bihar, we will not be filing any additional FIRs in those cases at Kapurthala.”

On taking action to dissuade owners from employing child labourers, the SSP said, “We are conducting awareness campaigns and meetings with farm owners.”

Kapurthala Deputy Commissioner Amit Kumar Panchal said, “Whenever such a case is reported, our joint teams immediately visit the site and all due action is taken as per procedure. Our District Child Protection Unit also organises regular seminars and awareness on these issues.”

Back home after a horrifying four months, Theku Paswan highlights the predicament: “Here (in Bihar), there are no farm labour jobs. Some people work at brick kilns. The ones on the Nepal side pay better. If we weren’t this poor, why would we go to Punjab? Now, we’ll rather die here.”

What’s inexplicable in this saga of human bondage, child trafficking and brute exploitation is the compulsion of well-to-do farmers to resort to such tactics. Just why?

FIRs in Bihar, Kapurthala

March 23, 2022: FIR registered at Sonbarsa police station in Sitamarhi, Bihar, under

Sections 370(5), 324, 263 of the IPC and 3, 14 of the Child and Adolescent Labour Act and 75 and 79 of the JJ Act against Bigan Rai.

August 28, 2022: FIR lodged at Bela police station in Bihar (Sitamarhi) against agents Bigan Rai and Mishri Rai under Sections 363, 370, 374, 504, 506 and 34 of the IPC.

November 21, 2024: FIR lodged under Sections 137(2), 146 and 3(5) of the BNS Act; Section 3(1)(h)(i)(s) of the SC/ST Act; Sections 17, 18 of the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act; Sections 3 and 14 of the Child and Adolescent Labour Prohibition Act and Sections 75 and 79 of the JJ Act against Bigan Rai at Bhitta police station in Sitamarhi, Bihar, on the complaint of the father of one of the (now rescued) children.

December 1, 2024: FIR under Sections 70(2) (gangrape), 95 (hiring, employing, engaging or using a child for sexual exploitation or pornography), 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt to another person), 126(2) (wrongful restraint), 127(2) (wrongful confinement), 61(2) (criminal conspiracy) of the BNS; Sections 4 and 6 (penetrative sexual assault) of the POCSO Act, Sections 75 and 79 (exploitation of child employees) of the JJ Act and Sections 3, 4 and 5 (prostitution) of the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act against Bigan Rai at Mahila Thana, Sitamarhi.

December 25, 2024: FIR lodged at Sadar police station, Kapurthala, under Section 3 of the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act, 1986, against Teja Singh, resident of Brindpur, for the employment of a minor child at his farm as established by a November 21, 2024, joint raid by the Punjab Police and Labour Department at Pehelwan Farms in Sial village and another farm at Sidhwa Dona village.