Probe across 3 states, a Yamuna clue: How man who forced Bihar teen into bonded labour was arrested by cops

After months of surveillance across three states, railway police arrest man accused of forcing a child into bonded labour in Haryana.

Four months of intensive investigation and technical surveillance that spanned more than a hundred villages across three states, gathering details from the locals while mapping train routes linked to the case — this is how the Bahadurgarh Government Railway Police arrested a man who allegedly forced a child to work as a bonded labourer in Haryana.

The boy, a resident of Kishanganj in Bihar, was stranded at the Bahadurgarh Railway Station last year in June and was allegedly lured by the accused with a job at his dairy farm and salary of Rs 10,000 a month. But the minor was allegedly subjected to two months of forced labour and physical abuse. After suffering a severe injury while cutting fodder in a machine, the injured boy fled the farm, walked 150 km to reach Nuh — clutching his severed arm — where a teacher rescued him and informed the police.

The accused, Anil Kumar, was arrested on December 30, and sent to judicial custody for two weeks at Jhajjar jail after being produced in court the next day, officers said on Friday.

The Haryana State Human Rights Commission (HHRC), which had taken suo motu cognisance of the incident based on a report in The Indian Express in August last year, pulled up police in November over the slow pace of investigation. In December, GRP Bahadurgarh Station House Officer Inspector Satya Prakash said he urged the panel to let him continue the probe in the case even as he was transferred to the Crime Branch soon after the FIR was lodged in the matter

The probe picked up pace soon after the HHRC hearing, said officers.

The boy had left his home in Bihar last year in April in search of a job with some friends for Bahadurgarh in Haryana. Police had earlier said that his friends started heading home by train by June, but the boy had no money to buy a ticket. It was then that he was allegedly lured by the accused.

Officers began mapping the train routes to trace the accused. “Recalling the sequence of the events, the boy’s father said he had his friends had got down from the train at Bahadurgarh, so we mapped routes on both sides in Sonipat, Jind, Old Delhi, Rohtak, Narela, Sahibabad, Ghaziabad, and Aligarh, in search of the accused. I went to Bihar on November 24 to pick him up… he and his family said they will come later. They came on November 28, and then began the hunt,” said the Inspector.

The boy was taken across three states amid the probe, said police. “We took him to platform 10 of New Delhi Railway Station too where the train he was at halts. I would even pay for fuel and food and use my own car when needed. The breakthrough came in the first week of December when he saw Yamuna near the ISBT in North Delhi,” the Inspector added.

The boy told police that the river bank seemed familiar. During questioning, he also told police that the accused had a school going daughter and mentioned the name. Officers contacted the Education department officers across Delhi-NCR where the river flows to trace a girl with the same name. “That proved unsuccessful, so we spoke to multiple villagers and heads of the villages along the Yamuna. I had to repeat the whole ordeal faced by the boy so many times. Then in Greater Noida’s Motipur village, we finally nabbed Anil… He did not even run and told us that he had kept the boy illegally, saying he made a mistake.”

The accused had thrown the severed part of the boy’s arm, which had got cut by a machine on his farm, into the Yamuna, police were told. He had allegedly taken him forcibly to Badauli village in Palwal, from where he walked to Nuh.

“The boy identified the accused after we sent him the photos. He was back home a week after he came, once we finished rounds of the different railway stations,” the Inspector said.