The Hindu : National : Flight from torture, will it be safelanding?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 06, 2004

National

National

Flight from torture, will it be safelanding?

By Ramya Kannan

The rescued children Phaudar (right) and Lalkoo with Phaudar's father, Mittan Sada, at Karunalaya in Chennai. — Photo: K. Pichumani

CHENNAI, JUNE 5. This could well be the stuff that potboilers are made of. A tale spanning two nations and two cities, involving two boys, trafficking and bonded labour unravelled itself today in Chennai.

Phaudar and Lalkoo Sada, Nepali cousins, are the heroes of this racy novella.

Plucked out of abject poverty and their schools with the promise of a better education and good part-time jobs, Phaudar (13) and Lalkoo (11) say they took a train to Mumbai with Ramashish Prasad, Lalkoo's uncle.

Phaudar, who speaks for both of them in strongly accented Hindi, says that in Mumbai, much to their shock, Mr. Prasad had sold them to a zari-making unit. "He took money from the Mumbai unit owner and left us there. Life there was much worse than it had ever been for us."

In Mumbai , he went by the name `Sanjay Sada' and his cousin Lalkoo was called `Ajay,' names Mr. Prasad told them they would have to answer to.

Describing their experiences in the zari-making unit, Phaudar says they had to draw designs and work on them from 6 a.m. to the early hours of the next day. "We were given only one meal and whipped with wires if we made a small mistake. They did not even let us sleep."

According to them, there are a number of other children following the same regimen in the place, some of them Nepalese kids from neighbouring villages, who were sold by the same man.

The torture lasted for three months, after which the two boys mustered up courage to run away from the unit.

They stumbled upon a railway station, took the first train and found themselves at the Chennai Central Station.

Thisis where the volunteers of Karunalaya, an organisation working for children in Chennai, found them on December 27, 2003. As the two boys, looking dishevelled, hungry and scared, walked hesitantly on the platform, the volunteers took them to a short-stay home.

"The boys were very eager to go home. We decided to launch a search for the family immediately," says Paul Sunder Singh of Karunalaya.

He got in touch with the Royal Nepalese Embassy in New Delhi and the story was dragged right back to the Mountain Kingdom.

The Nepalese Government had a single detail to go by— the boys were from Krishna Nagar village in Satari district — and they cast their dragnet.

Some months later, Mr. Singh received a letter from a schoolmaster in Krishna Nagar, who was writing on behalf of Mr. Prasad.

The letter told another story. It claimed that the two boys had been missing and a search had been launched for them. It also assured that family members would reach Chennai in about 10 days to meet them.

It was the first piece of good news that Phaudar and Lalkoo had heard in a long time.

They were eager to return home, until late last night when Phaudar's father, Mittan, arrived with a relative, Suman Kumar.

The reunion was not happy after all. When the boys saw Mr. Kumar, they hesitated, recognising him to be a nephew of Mr. Prasad.

"He is a bad man. My father does not know about him, but we do. He will take us to Mumbai again and sell us. How can we go with him?"

Mr. Kumar said he had only been asked to take the boys home. "I will not harm them. They are my responsibility until they reach Nepal."

They left for Kolkata by the Howrah Mail last night. They will then travel to Bihar and slip through the porous border to Nepal, much the same way as they came here.

The NGO has intimated the district authorities of the expected time of the boys' arrival.

As soon as they reach home, the boys will have to be taken to the District Collector's office and register their arrival.

"That way we will at least know they have reached home safe and not been sold once again. But we cannot guarantee that it will not happen in future again," Mr. Singh says.

"No, it will not. The boys will go to school," says Mr. Mittan.

Phaudar is more vehement, "He [my father] might try to sell us again. But I know them now. I will not go with them."

"Nor will I," Lalkoo breaks his shy silence to add.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National