Arms severed, held captive, brother of teenage victim of bonded labour pleads for justice

“I want justice for my brother,” said Jitender Kumar, even as a second surgery was performed on his younger brother, Santosh, 14, within a week at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in Rohtak on Thursday.

The teenager, with his arm severed from the elbow and crudely bandaged, was walking along the road in Nuh on July 29 when two schoolteachers spotted him and took him to a police station. He was later shifted to the PGIMS Rohtak after a first-aid at a hospital in Nuh.

Santosh later told the police that he was held captive at some place in Haryana as a bonded labourer and had severed his arm while feeding grass into a motorised chopper.

Though the family had initially refused to file a police complaint, Mr. Kumar, told The Hindu over phone that the man, who had unleashed cruelty on his brother, be brought to book and punished.

“His arm was still hanging from his body, but his employer, instead of taking him to the doctor, cut it with a blade. He then made him sit inside a car, covered his face with a piece of cloth and abandoned him on a road in the evening. When my brother objected to his face being covered, he even beat him up,” said Jitender, 23, a native of Bihar’s Kishanganj.

Left to fend for himself, Santosh kept walking the entire night and perhaps days before he was spotted in Nuh. “The least that his employer could do was to provide him some medical care,” said the elder brother. He, however, said his brother did not know the exact place where he was kept.

Fleeing with friends

Santosh had run away from his house in May along with his friends. The family then filed a missing complaint at the local police station and he was finally traced to Haryana. “My father reached Haryana to bring him back. While the two were returning by a train, Santosh got down at Bahadurgarh railway station to fetch water and missed the train. We kept looking for him days and weeks, but to no avail. He was reunited with us only after we got a call from Haryana Police on July 31 saying that Santosh, his arms severed, was in a hospital,” said Mr. Kumar, adding that the family had been struggling to meet the various expenses.

Making an appeal to the government for financial support, Mr. Kumar said that no help had come their way except a social organisation giving them ₹5,000 for medicines. “We cannot even afford to take a room on rent and stay in the hospital,” said Mr. Kumar.

He said the police team stationed at the hospital had come to them, but he has yet to lodge a formal complaint as he was pre-occupied with his brother’s treatment.

David Sunder Singh, panel advocate, State Human Rights Commission, Tamil Nadu, told The Hindu over phone that the victim was eligible for ₹30,000 immediate financial help as rehabilitation amount if it was proved in a probe by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate that he was a bonded labourer as per the definition contained in Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act and another ₹70,000 after the FIR was registered. He said the SDM of the place where the boy was found by the police could conduct the probe in case the exact location of his employer was not known. He added that the police could register the FIR based on the information available to them from various sources, including media reports, without waiting for a formal complaint from the family.