25 child labourers freed from factory

The children, aged between 8 and 14 years old, had been forced to work without pay for a sweatshop boss after their parents were tricked into sending them to the city to enrol in a school.

Labour Department agents, working with children's charity Bachpan bachao Andolan (BBA), stormed the buildings using powers granted by India's Bonded Labourers Act, which commits the government to tougher enforcement of regulations that outlaw child labour.

BBA organiser Umesh Gupta revealed that the children had been forced to sleep in the factory and work "every hour that they could."

Mr Gupta explained that most of the children had been trafficked from their homes 800 miles east of the capital in Bihar state, between Nepal and Bangladesh, and were put to work making simple children's toys and intricate bindi forehead decorations.

Saleem, the youngest of the rescued children, said that he had "not been paid for my work although I toil from early morning to late night so that we are able to complete the orders.

"We were given two meals a day, but we are beaten for very small things like sleeping late or not doing our job properly," he said.

Mr Gupta said that traffickers had persuaded Saleem's father to let the child be taken to New Delhi to study, but that Saleem had been passed on to the sweatshop owner.

But he added that "now the children had been rescued, they can go home.

"On being handed over to their parents, they will be given a 20,000 rupees (about £250) in compensation and enrolled in government schools.

"A bank account will be opened in the child's name at the nearest post office, and a stipend of 300 rupees (about £4) deposited every month so that he or she continues with their studies," he said.

Campaigners against child poverty celebrated the sweatshop raid, but urged the government to step up prosecutions of exploitative bosses.

Save The Children worker Shireen Miller stressed that although the government had exposed 2,229 violations of the law in the past year, only 211 employers had actually been prosecuted.

"What are these figures in a country the size of India? Next to nothing," she insisted, adding that even the government's own figures suggested that there are more than 12 million children working in India.