NEW DELHI: Delhi high court on Thursday sought to know the stand of the Centre and the AAP government on a PIL alleging that child labourers were employed at the factory at Anaj Mandi where a fire on December 8 claimed 43 lives.
A bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar issued a notice to the Centre, Delhi government, police and the state of Bihar seeking their stand on the plea by NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA).
BBA submitted that several minors had died in the fire. The NGO, in its plea filed through advocate Prabhsahay Kaur, sought directions to the authorities to inquire into the number of children who were employed at the factory and also provide police protection to those injured in the fire.
The NGO also sought a direction to the authorities to inquire into trafficking and child labour. It said it had learnt about minors being employed at the factory in an interaction with their relatives. It also contended that the minors were “tutored and coerced” by the traffickers to say they were 19 years old.
The plea also alleged that one of the injured minors had disappeared from the burns ward of Lok Nayak hospital. It urged the court to intervene, saying the incident indicated involvement of child traffickers and sought directions to police to trace the missing child.
“The petitioner’s representatives found questionable persons at the hospital where the children are admitted, who are possibly middlemen/traffickers who had brought the children to Delhi for work from their native villages,” the plea claimed.
BBA claimed, “Most child labourers work in cramped and overcrowded factories at Anaj Mandi and across Delhi, especially in unauthorised colonies where manufacturing units are illegally running in residential areas under the nose of the state authorities. Children are not only made to work, but also sleep and eat there and their movement is severely restricted. These hubs of child labour are hotbeds of trafficking, as also illness, where children are kept like slaves.”
The NGO urged the court to direct the authorities to carry out a time bound comprehensive survey of child and bonded labour in Delhi and conduct rescue operations. It also sought directions to the authorities concerned to “rehabilitate, compensate and recover minimum wages of the child labourers from the Anaj Mandi establishments” and to seal the units or factories.
Police told the court that identification of most of the deceased people had not been possible, but the postmortem examination of the bodies had already begun.
A bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar issued a notice to the Centre, Delhi government, police and the state of Bihar seeking their stand on the plea by NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA).
BBA submitted that several minors had died in the fire. The NGO, in its plea filed through advocate Prabhsahay Kaur, sought directions to the authorities to inquire into the number of children who were employed at the factory and also provide police protection to those injured in the fire.
The NGO also sought a direction to the authorities to inquire into trafficking and child labour. It said it had learnt about minors being employed at the factory in an interaction with their relatives. It also contended that the minors were “tutored and coerced” by the traffickers to say they were 19 years old.
The plea also alleged that one of the injured minors had disappeared from the burns ward of Lok Nayak hospital. It urged the court to intervene, saying the incident indicated involvement of child traffickers and sought directions to police to trace the missing child.
“The petitioner’s representatives found questionable persons at the hospital where the children are admitted, who are possibly middlemen/traffickers who had brought the children to Delhi for work from their native villages,” the plea claimed.
BBA claimed, “Most child labourers work in cramped and overcrowded factories at Anaj Mandi and across Delhi, especially in unauthorised colonies where manufacturing units are illegally running in residential areas under the nose of the state authorities. Children are not only made to work, but also sleep and eat there and their movement is severely restricted. These hubs of child labour are hotbeds of trafficking, as also illness, where children are kept like slaves.”
The NGO urged the court to direct the authorities to carry out a time bound comprehensive survey of child and bonded labour in Delhi and conduct rescue operations. It also sought directions to the authorities concerned to “rehabilitate, compensate and recover minimum wages of the child labourers from the Anaj Mandi establishments” and to seal the units or factories.
Police told the court that identification of most of the deceased people had not been possible, but the postmortem examination of the bodies had already begun.
