JAGATSINGHPUR: For nearly two weeks, Sasmita Behera and her four-year-old son Surjya stayed locked inside their one-room asbestos house in Kuchipudi village of Andhra Pradesh fearful of being beaten up by her employer for denying to work without wages. However, the travails of the mother and child ended, when Odia actor Sabyasachi Mishra sent a car to the neighbouring state to bring them back to their native village of Adapati under Kolar panchayat in the district.
Deserted by her husband, Sasmita was staying in her father’s house along with 10 other family members at Adapati. When her uncle found out a job opportunity for her at a factory manufacturing egg packaging boxes in Kuchipudi two years back, she decided to migrate along with her son to eke out a living. She left behind her seven-year-old daughter with her parents.
Sasmita earned only Rs 3000 a month by working for 12 hours in a day and the employer Shovanarani Reddy provided all workers including her free accommodation close to the unit.Although she managed to survive with the meagre earning, her life changed overnight when lockdown was imposed.
The factory shut down and Reddy withheld salaries. She hired Sasmita as a domestic help in her house and promised to pay her the wages.
However, the wages never came and after working in Reddy’s house for over a month, Sasmita decided to stop in mid-May.
But, due to lack of knowledge she could not register with the State Government’s Covid portal to return. Besides, there was no transportation available to come back to Odisha.
In the meantime, Reddy forced her to vacate the house. “Although I sought time from her to move out as there was no train to return home, she started sending goons to threaten me. Whenever I asked her about my dues, she would assault me. We never stepped out of our house during day time. On many days, we survived on biscuits and water”, said Sasmita.
With no other way out, the woman wrote a letter to the Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik requesting him to rescue her and sent pictures of the letter to some Odia activists through WhatsApp with the help of a neighbour.When actor Sabyasachi came to know about her plight from social media, he sent a car from Bhubaneswar to Kuchipudi village to bring the helpless woman and her son back last week. Sasmita reached Odisha on Monday and is currently under institutional quarantine at Kolar panchayat, said nodal officer of Tirtol block Parthasarathi Das.