Hired to dig a well, they were kept chained inside it for weeks

Workers rescued from Maha’s Osmanabad district say they were lured by the promise of big wages only to be starved and tortured by contractors
Assistant inspector Jagdish Raut was not ready to believe the story. But 23-year-old Bhagwan Gukse kept pleading with him to rescue his cousin and other fellow labourers who he claimed were being held in chains, starved and tortured by job contractors at well-digging sites in Osmanabad district.

Bhagwan, who had managed to escape from a well-digging site, “refused to budge from his story”. “When we reached the site in Khamaswadi village, we were shocked. Several workers were in chains,” said Raut of Dhoki police.

A total of 11 workers were eventually rescued from two sites. That was end-June. Two months later, the labourers still shudder to look back on the time they spent in captivity performing forced labour. One of them, Maruti Jatalkar of Atkur village of Nanded district, had agreed to undertake the work in the hope that it would bring him money for his second daughter’s wedding on May 15. He never reached home for the function.
Easy Prey For Agents
“One month and 18 days – that is how long I was chained inside the well. I remember every single day. I cannot believe I was not there for my daughter’s wedding,” says Jatalkar. It was the promise of high wages and easy work that snared the other workers, too. Instead, they got hard manual labour, breaking up large stones and moving boulders on empty stomachs and no pay.

There are fears that their story may not be all that uncommon in the parched landscape of Osmanabad district. Every summer, the digging of wells is an activity that assumes hectic proportions in its villages and farms. The flow of labourers is managed by agents and contractors who hang around at railway stations and bus stops with an eye out for people like the Gukse cousins and Jatalkar. They offer wages of Rs 500 a day and three meals, a handsome proposition compared with the usual earnings of Rs 150 to Rs 250 a day.

But for the labourers who fall for it, the descent into nightmare is almost immediate. Narrating his ordeal, Jatalkar said he was first taken in a three-wheeler to an undisclosed destination. Thereafter, a four-wheeler took him and some others to another place where the contractor took over, ferrying them to the well-digging site over 200km away in the dark of the night.
Beaten Up And Drugged
“At the site, we were immediately chained to some people who were already there. I was starving and asked for food. But we were forcefed a liquid that made us fall asleep immediately,” Jatalkar remembers the first night.

The workers were woken up at 6am and rushed to the site. Till the time of his rescue, Jatalkar had worked at three such sites. Depending on the pressure to complete the dig, the workers were forced to work for 14 to 18 hours. Each night after work, they were forced to consume the liquid that drugged them into sleeping. Jatalkar and the 10 others had worked at sites in Wakharwadi and Khamaswadi villages. “Six of us got just three to four bhakris (jowar or bhakri roti) and red chilli chutney. The contractor would assault us with sticks, pipes, or pickaxes for demanding salt or more food,” says Jatalkar.

The police found that the men had been forcibly held for between 15 days and four months. “At one location, the workers were chained and placed inside an under-construction well. At the other location, they were chained to a tractor,” an officer said.
‘Well-Oiled Network’
In the dry parts of central Maharashtra, owning a well signifies prosperity. The digging season starts from Gudi Padwa (Maharashtrian New Year) and continues till the arrival of the monsoon. Depending on the size of the well, a dig is completed in 15-25 days.

SP Atul Kulkarni said it appears there is a “well-oiled network of agents who target unemployed people only to hand them over to contractors”. Pranav Rajendra Pawar would agree. He was among the five men rescued from Khamaswadi. While the others are school dropouts, Pawar has a PG degree in history. The 29-year-old from Aurangabad, son of a Class-I state government officer, didn’t have a job. An agent in Ahmednagar district told him he would place him with a logistics company in Pune. But when Pawar reached Ahmednagar, the agent handed him to a well-digging contractor.

Based on Bhagwan Gukse’s complaint, seven suspects, including a woman, have been booked for a host of offences, including under the Bonded Labour Abolition Act. The main accused, Krishna Kalu Shinde, 23, said it was hard to find labourers to dig wells and get the work completed in time, so he would chain them inside the well itself. Locals said they were surprised to find such a thing was happening under their very noses. “I asked everyone. All of them said they were unaware of the contractor chaining the workers,” said Khamaswadi sarpanch Anil Patil.