Old City Child labourers dared hazardous work conditions to make colourful Charminar bangles

As hundreds of children including boys and girls board the Patna bound train at Secunderabad railway station today for their homes, the stark naked truth persists that these children were made to work in the dark alleys of old city in extreme heat glass foundries to make colorful bangles for beautiful women.

The bare delicate hands and fingers of the homeless and orphaned teens were the tools that made glitter more fabulous at the Lad bazaar near Charminar. Many had been living in gutter like rooms without ventilation, no water to wash and clothes to wear but under the gaze of CC cameras like animals and criminals.

18-year old Mohammad Laddan from Gaya District in Bihar got to his seat in the train, little did he know that he was the eye of the national media. It was the end to his one-year of nightmare in Hyderabad, where he had been forced to work day and night for a bangle manufacturer. "I set record of making 75 sets on a single day," he claimed proudly, hardly knowing that he was one of the bonded labourers working in the ghettos of old city.

Laddan was among the 83 children who were sent back home on the Secunderaabd-Patna Express train here on Thursday from Secunderabad Railway station, after being rescued by Labour Department officials from bangle and clothes shops in the old city. “I love Hyderabad and its biryani. I had come from Bihar to find work, so I could send home money to my mother, as I don’t have a father," he said. Back in Gaya he would try to use his skills in bangle making to start a small business, if he gets financial support .

Like Laddan, many others were sent here by someone they didn’t know. Police and their rescuers from the labor department say some middle men had hired them for pittance and extracted hard labor. Each child who was being sent back had a different story to tell, but the one common thread in all of them was that they were simply being exploited by the industry owners.

Hyderabad Assistant Labour Commissioner Shyam Sunder Jaju said that in most cases the children were not aware of what was happening to their money. “Though they were being told that their parents were being paid, it could just be a lie. Also, some might have been sold by their parents also. We need to ascertain all facts,” he says.

About 300 cases have been booked in total under Section 3 of the Child Labour Act and sections 16, 17 and 18 of the Bonded Labour Abolition Act, for non-bailable cases against those who had exploited the children .

He said that the children (343 in all) belonged to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan, Bangladesh and even Burma. The Labour Department had maintained that it had rescued a total over 1000 children from various district towns of Telangana. Mohd. Imtiyaz, in-charge of the District Child Protection Office, Hyderabad, said that 82, 100, and 83 (Total 265) children were sent in three batches since January 24, the date from when they were rescued. “Presently there are still some of them in our juvenile homes from Bihar(26) and West Bengal (32),” he said.

Labour Department Principal Secretary R. V. Chandravadan says that most of the migrated children were traced during a massive police hunt for criminals. They were traced while they were working in bangle and cloth factories during a cordon search by the police for arms. There could be about 2,000 of them still being employed in these dark alleys, he suspects.