‘Bihar ja raha hoon’: Kishanganj boy’s 150km trek with severed arm exposes bonded labour; rescued by teachers in Haryana | Patna News

PATNA: A 15-year-old boy from Bihar’s Kishanganj, a survivor of bonded labour, is battling for recovery at PGI trauma centre in Rohtak after suffering an ordeal that shocked even the rescuers. On Saturday, his brother said, “He had a surgery and is in recovery now. It is financially getting very difficult for us.” The teenager was found on July 29 trudging along the streets of Haryana’s Nuh district, clad only in underwear, exhausted, and with his left arm severed and crudely bandaged. He had walked over 150km for more than 22 hours, trying to return to Bihar, when two govt school teachers, Arvind Kumar and Rakesh Kumar, spotted him. Arvind said, “He looked like a madman. I stopped our car and asked him where he was going, to which the boy replied ‘Bihar ja raha hoon’. We both were shocked as Bihar was several kilometres away and asked the boy to come with us.” The teachers gave him food and water before taking him to the nearest police station. According to police, the boy had been allegedly held captive at a dairy farm in Haryana’s Jind district. He told rescuers he had been lured by a stranger near Bahadurgarh railway station with the promise of a job paying Rs 10,000 a month. Once at the dairy, he was denied wages, given little to eat and confined to a room. His duties included cutting fodder with a motorised chopper. One day, he accidentally sliced through his left arm. Rather than taking him to hospital, the dairy owner allegedly sought local treatment and had the wound bandaged. The boy claimed he was given medicine that rendered him unconscious for three days. When he awoke, some cash he had been given was missing, and he was driven to an unfamiliar location from where he began walking towards Bihar. It was ASI Kamal Singh of Sadar Nuh police station who first spoke to him, although communication was hampered by dialect differences. Singh took him to a local hospital, where doctors estimated the wound to be about 14 days old. “The boy could not remember his address, where he was kept, or even the phone numbers of his parents due to his pain and trauma,” Singh said. After hours of effort, Singh contacted the SP in Kishanganj, who tasked a local station house officer with tracing the family. “We then first contacted Jitendra, who arrived at the police station around 7.30pm,” Singh said. Police said the boy was too traumatised to identify the exact location of the dairy or the name of its owner. No FIR has been filed, as the family, which survives hand-to-mouth, was hesitant to pursue a case.