Meat factory owner, wife & 3 managers held for hiring trafficked kids

GHAZIABAD: The owner of a meat processing and exporting unit in Dasna, his wife and three managers were arrested on Saturday for allegedly hiring children trafficked from villages of Bengal and Bihar at its abattoir.

A total of 55 workers, including 22 minors, involved in slicing meat or packaging and weighing processes were rescued from International Agro Foods in a joint operation by police, the non-profit Mission Mukti Foundation and officials of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) on May 29.

The case came to light after a 17-year-old girl, who was brought from her hometown in West Bengal to NCR on the promise of marriage, was rescued by Mission Mukti Foundation in April. She had told the NGO that more children were working at the factory.

Yaseen Qureshi, the owner of Agro Foods, his wife Tasleen, who is one of the directors of the company, and general managers Aarif, Manjoor Hasan, and Hasan Ali were picked up from the Dasna factory on Saturday and sent to judicial custody by a local court.

They have been booked under sections of the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, and for human trafficking after a complaint was submitted by the district child protection officer Jitendra Kumar at the Masuri police station.

Police are now tracing the labour contractors who brought the minors to the factory promising good pay.

DCP (rural) Vivek Yadav told TOI they recovered 40 Aadhaar cards and other documents from the factory which showed at least 20 of the rescued were minors, the youngest of them just 13 years old. “Documents of the 15 others rescued were missing so they were sent for medical tests to determine their age. Reports show two of them are below 17 years,” Yadav said.

According to cops, the children were paid anything between Rs 8,000 and Rs 12,000 a month, nearly half of what adult labourers get for jobs in abattoirs.

“The factory mainly hired minors as it was cheap labour. They paid labour contractors between Rs 15,000 and Rs 20,000 per child,” the DCP said. The children worked in two shifts and were engaged in hazardous jobs, such as skinning animals and slicing meat. Some were also involved in packaging and weighing meat products.

TOI earlier reported that the rescued minors and other youngsters were accommodated at a ‘hostel’ inside the factory’s abattoir. “Their living conditions were appalling. The hostel had no fans or beds, just 25 mattresses for all of them to sleep on. They were prohibited from leaving the slaughterhouse without permission. If someone wished to go outside the company for shopping or other purposes, they had to seek permission from one of the managers. The maximum allotted time for such outings was limited to 5 hours,” a senior officer said. A security guard, stationed inside the factory, would monitor the minors when they retired after the day’s work, police said.



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