Surat: Eighty-six minor children were rescued from textile units in Surat’s Puna area during a joint operation conducted by Surat and Udaipur (Rajasthan) police, exposing a major child labour racket operating in the city’s famed textile sector.The operation was carried out with assistance from NGOs and child rights organisations, including Gayatri Seva Sansthan (GSS), the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Association for Voluntary Action (AVA), and Just Rights for Children — a nationwide child protection network with over 250 partner organisations.Puna police inspector VM Desai told TOI, “We were contacted by Udaipur district police AHTU inspector Dayalal Chauhan with specific intelligence that children from Rajasthan were being employed as labourers in Surat textile units. Based on the inputs, around 50 personnel from Surat and Udaipur police, along with NGO members, conducted raids on nearly 100 textile units in Sitaram Society.”During the raids, authorities found child labourers employed in 27 units. “We rescued 86 children aged between 10 and 17 years. Most of them belong to the tribal areas of Udaipur district in Rajasthan. Owners of all 27 units have been booked under the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, the Juvenile Justice Act, and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The rescued children have been handed over to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and further proceedings are underway,” Desai added.According to activists associated with the operation, the children had been trafficked from economically weak tribal regions of Rajasthan and forced to work in poor conditions for meagre wages.Jitendra Parmar, media coordinator of Just Rights for Children, alleged, “Our organisations worked for nearly two months and surveyed the locations where these children were employed. In several cases, parents were allegedly paid between Rs 8,000 and Rs 10,000 to send their children for work. The children were kept in inhuman conditions and paid only Rs 4,500 to Rs 8,000 per month.”Police said younger children were mainly assigned sari folding and packing work, while older minors were engaged in cutting and thread-related work. Investigators also found that some children were confined inside houses for nearly 12 hours, with certain premises allegedly locked from the outside to prevent them from fleeing.
