The Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh is facing drought continuously for fourth year. Damoh and Chhatarpur districts are among the worst hit areas.
Empty, locked houses are a common sight in the villages. Given the tough conditions, the rural poor are plunged into the crisis every year and are not left with any other option but to migrate to other States in search of work.
Every year a large number of such distress migrants reach Delhi and other metropolitan areas where an organised chain of labour contractors and middlemen lure them with employment at promising wages.
However, on pretext of such employment, the migrants are often trafficked to several industrial or construction sites where there are compelled to go under forced and bonded labour.
One such story is about 6 migrant Dalit families of labourers natives of Damoh and Chhatarpur districts, Madhya Pradesh who were forced to leave their villages because of the scantness of jobs.
In search of work they reached Delhi on May 9. At sarai kale khan, outside the railway station itself, one Prempal approached them and under the pretext of being a contractor he lured the families to get them employed.
Thereafter, Prempal accompanied these families to a construction site at sector 27, Noida where different sums of money were paid to the families as an advance to their prospective employment.
It is interesting to note that the construction site is a community center cum club house which is being developed by Noida authority.
Since then, the families had been continuously working at the site and despite repeated demands, no sum of money in form of wages or otherwise was ever paid to them.
The families were living under a continuous threat of thrashing and were forced to work against their will. The complex was regularly guarded so that no one flees the premises.
Only one member was allowed to go out at a time while the rest of the family members were confined to ensure his return at the site.