A duck rearer in Andhra Pradesh's Tirupati and his family have been arrested for keeping a woman and her three children from a tribal community as bonded labourers over a Rs 25,000 loan, making her leave her son behind as "collateral" and then secretly burying his body in another state, claiming he had died of jaundice.
When the woman finally managed to arrange the money - with exorbitant interest - that the man had sought, he told her the boy had run away. It was only after a case was filed and the man was questioned that he revealed the boy had died and he had buried the body near his in-laws' house in Tamil Nadu's Kanchipuram.
On Tuesday, as the police exhumed the boy's body, the woman sat on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.
Anakamma, her husband Chenchaiah, and their three sons, who are all from the Yanadi tribal community, worked for a year for the duck rearer in Tirupati. Chenchaiah died, but the employer continued to make Ankamma and her three children work for him, telling them they could not leave because her husband had taken a Rs 25,000 loan from him.
Officials said Ankamma and all three children were made to work very long hours and she pleaded for higher wages, but the duck rearer refused. When she insisted that she wanted to leave, he demanded Rs. 45,000 - with Rs 20,000 as interest - as repayment of the loan. She asked for 10 days to arrange the money, but was told that she would have to leave one of her children behind as collateral. Left with no option, she reluctantly agreed.
Litany Of Lies
Anakamma occasionally spoke to her son over the phone and, every time, he would beg her to come get him, telling her he was overworked. The last time she spoke to him was on April 12.
In the last week of April, Anakamma managed to arrange the money and contacted the duck rearer, telling him she was coming to collect her son. The man initially told her the boy had been sent elsewhere. When she kept pressing him for information, he said the boy had been hospitalised and, finally, that he had run away.
Fearing that something had happened to her son, Anakamma approached the local police with the help of some tribal community leaders.
A police team was formed and, when he was interrogated, the duck rearer admitted that the boy had died and he had secretly buried the body in Kanchipuram. The man, his wife and his son were immediately arrested and a case was registered on Monday under various sections of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, Child Labour Act, Juvenile Justice Act, SC/ST Atrocities Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
The body was exhumed on Tuesday and a post-mortem is underway.
Tirupati Collector Venkateswar told NDTV they are taking a serious view of the case.
"There is CCTV footage to show the boy was taken to a hospital. The duck-rearer's family says the boy died of jaundice. But he was buried secretly and his family was not informed. We are taking a serious view of that," he said.
Activists said the Yanadi tribals are particularly vulnerable to bonded labour and 50 members of the community have been rescued in the recent past. "Usually, an advance is used to trap the victims," said an activist.
