NAGAPATTINAM: "Have you finally come to take me away,” asked 28-year-old Kanniyappan, who left his herd and came running to the people in formal clothes who arrived there in vehicles, and asked them with a desperate face. The NGO activists who had been speaking to him, held his shoulders, and reassured him, and said, “Yes. This time, we are not alone. We brought the police and a big officer with us. You do not have to be afraid of your owner anymore. You are free now. ” said the activists.
Kanniyappan has been held under the bonded labour for about 11 years since he was 17. His two younger brothers were brought into labour after that. He whistled and called his brothers and two other boys who left the herd and ran towards them. These are the five Adivasi boys from Villupuram district who had been sold into bonded labour have been rescued and freed near Nagapattinam on Tuesday.
The five youth is ageing from 10 to 28, belonging to Irular community, from Thirukovilur in Villupuram district, were held in several years of hard labour after herding grazing cattle in many districts before being rescued by revenue officials with the aid of NGO who tracked them for over a month. The youth have been identified as K Kanniyappan (28), K Mari (23), and K Tirupathi (14), N Chinraj (10), and R Sivaraj (14) from Irular community in Sittilingam Madam near Thirukovilur In Villupuram district.
Kanniyappan, Mari, and Tirupathi are the sons of Kannan, and Santhi, of the same family. The Kannan-Santhi couple, and the parents of Chinraj, and Sivaraj, namely Nagappan-Anjalai, and Ramachandran-Lakshmi are part of semi-primitive, Irular tribes from Sittilingam Madam, who were themselves, labourers.
“It started with our usual interaction with the tribal community in Sittilingam Madam in late February where a family said their children are in bonded labour, and they cannot get them back due to the debt they owed. After collecting the details of identity, our activists went through districts like Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Sivagangai district to look for places where Kanniyappan once told their parents,” said K Krishnan, the secretary of National Adivasi Solidarity (NASC).
The sold youth and their employer are like nomads and travel to several places in Tamil Nadu after herding cattle at a place for about six weeks. They were herding about 650 goats belonging to one, S Muthukrishnan, from Paramakudi in Ramanathapuram district, who had brought the youth from Thirukovilur after paying their parents for Rs 10000 to Rs 4000 depending on their age, separately over the years.
The five youth, K Kanniyappan, K Mari, and K Tirupathi, N Chinraj, and R Sivaraj had slept like nomads, wore old clothes, bathed at wherever water was available at ponds every few weeks. The eldest, Kanniyappan had the fortune of meeting their parents three years ago, but the rest other Adivasi children were not that fortunate. The group does not stay at one single place. They were arranged by their employer to travel in trucks once in six to seven weeks to find wherever pastures are available. Muthukrishnan had been abusive of the children if they had not raised the goats properly for the government procurement and fed them nothing but porridge.
The youth have to walk several kilometres per day for grazing and were abused at times for not sticking to work, or for talking to strangers over the years. The youth had to lie about the activists who had come for the rescue. So, the activists had a hard time following them as they were increasing kept moving away to place before they hop on a truck, and go to another district.
The NGO activists said they had been tracking the youth for over a month since they received the information for the first time in early March. They said they had to follow the youth without the knowledge of their employer and had to convince them for days. They finally located them in Thirukannapuram in Nagapattinam district. Four of the activists had been meeting the youth in the pastures where they were herding, and slowly tried to socialize with them. Initially, the children thought the owner is tricking them with spies. It took over ten days to gain their trust, as they finally requested the activists to rescue them from the hard labour. The activists added they had to be patient with their rescue mission, as he said there are chances the children could be whisked to another place if the owner had found out,or the children could get killed in the process.
Finally, daylight shined upon Kanniyappan on Monday evening, and the other boys were rescued by a team led by Sub Collector AK Kamal Kishore who got into the fields, met the children, and confronted the cattle owner Muthukrishnan, and got him arrested. Muthukrishnan was defiant in his argument that he would not let the children go as his parents owe him money. Muthukrishnan has been charged under Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Bill of 1976, Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act of 2015 and IPC 374 (Unlawful compulsory labour).
While speaking to Express, Sub Collector AK Kamal Kishore said, “The youth have been given a Release Certificate from Bonded Labour on Tuesday afternoon and have been safely sent to Villupuram. The complete amount for their rehabilitation would be dispatched after completion of the ongoing investigation. But, at the moment, they can breathe free now.”