The Sindh High Court, Hyderabad circuit bench, freed 40 bonded labourers, including 13 children from a village in Samaro taluka, Tharparkar district on Tuesday.
The single bench comprising Justice Muhammad Mazhar Ali ordered the extrication on Monday and also directed the police to produce the accused landlords, Chaman Mali and Nehal Mali, on April 11, according to advocate Nazeer Laghari, the counsel for complainant Bhugro Bheel.
The high court police of Samaro police station raided a farm on the court’s orders and retrieved the labourers.
On Tuesday, the court took notice of the petition filed by Bheel with the help of an NGO, Society for Protection of the Rights of Children (SPARC), seeking his family’s freedom. The freed labourers told The Express Tribune that they had been working for the landlords for the past six to seven years, but they were not getting their due share in the harvest. “The landlord only gave us food and Rs200 every fortnight,” said Bheel.
When asked where they would go from there, Roopa Mal Bhaeel said that they hailed from Chachro. “When it rains, we go there to make a livelihood. But for the rest of the year, we look for work in other parts of Sindh.”
According to the labourers, they feel threatened and don’t want to return to the same village. “Kamdar Karim Baksh Lanjwani (the manager of the landlords) will not spare us,” they said.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 6th, 2011.
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