A NINE-YEAR-OLD BONDED LABOURER

Last week, a duck farmer was arrested on charges of keeping a child from Andhra Pradesh as 'collateral' for a loan and then killing him in Tamil Nadu. Though bonded labour has long been banned by law, it continues to be practised, say activists. Nellore Sravani reports on how the boy's mother, Ankamma, a woman from a tribal community, tried in vain to bring her child back home

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Two years ago, Mannepalli Ankamma, a woman from a tribal community in Andhra Pradesh, who does not know her age, decided to work for N. Muthu, a 60-year-old duck farmer. He promised her a salary of ₹24,000 a month for herding cows and helping him run a sweet shop in Satyavedu, a town in the Tirupati district of Andhra Pradesh. Ankamma took an advance of ₹15,000 from him. When she was unable to repay the amount, Muthu took away her youngest son, M. Venkatesh, as 'collateral'. He also allegedly inflated the amount she owed him to ₹42,000.

On April 9, Ankamma spoke to Venkatesh over the phone. The nine-year-old boy told her that he was busy tending to Muthu's ducks in Kancheepuram district in Tamil Nadu. Ankamma lives in Thurakapalle village in Duttaluru mandal of Nellore district in Andhra Pradesh, where she works in her current employer Siva Reddy's lemon orchard. She assured her child that she would be there in two days with ₹42,000 of cash in hand. She promised that he would be home soon.

India's shame — the trap of bonded labour

Before ending the call, Ankamma asked Venkatesh what he had eaten for lunch. Curd rice, he said, an improvement over the previous day's meal of rice mixed with water.

That was the last time Ankamma spoke to him.

Buried by the river

A week later, clutching wads of cash, Ankamma travelled to Satyavedu, about 270 kilometres from her village. But Muthu refused the money.

"He used casteist slurs against me," she recalls. "He also told me that my son had run away with his phone and some cash." Dejected, Ankamma returned home.

When a month passed and there was still no word from Venkatesh, Reddy helped her file a First Information Report (FIR) at the Satyavedu police station on May 19.

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