On a scorching June night, Bhagwan Ghukse woke up with a jolt and decided to run for his life.
For the past month, Mr Ghukse had been kept captive in a squalid shanty in the western state of Maharashtra along with six other daily-wage workers. The workers were hired by some contractors in the state's Osmanabad district to dig wells, but were later forced into bonded labour which is illegal in India.
Mr Ghukse described the dehumanising living conditions, of being beaten, drugged and forced into long hours of manual labour with little food or water. At night, the workers would be chained to tractors so that they couldn't escape. And when they couldn't sleep, restless from pain, hunger and fatigue, Mr Gukse said the men would lash them with sticks and then forcefully sedate them with alcohol.
"I knew death was inevitable here. But I wanted to try escaping at least once before that," he said.
On most days, Mr Gukse and other captives would get so exhausted with work, beatings and no food that they would have no energy left to plan their escape.
But on 15 or 16 June - Mr Ghukse can't remember the exact date because the days had long started blending into each other - he decided to give it a try. Crouching in the darkness, he reached for the little lock of the chain on his feet, slid a finger inside and kept twisting it for hours until it finally came free.
As he clambered out of the compound, he saw a vast sugarcane field and decided to run towards it. "I had no idea where I was. All I knew was I had to get back home. I followed a railway track next to the field and kept running."
Mr Ghukse managed to reach his village and informed the police about the torture, following which officials rescued 11 other workers from two separate wells run by the same contractors.
"At first we didn't believe the labourer, but when we reached the location, we were shocked to see the conditions of the men," local police official Jagdish Raut, who is in charge of the case, told the BBC.
เว็บพนันออนไลน์
