{"id":2249,"date":"2002-08-04T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-08-04T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/08\/04\/2002-08-04-freed-bonded-laborers-thank-swami-agnivesh\/"},"modified":"2002-08-04T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-08-04T12:00:00","slug":"2002-08-04-freed-bonded-laborers-thank-swami-agnivesh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/08\/04\/2002-08-04-freed-bonded-laborers-thank-swami-agnivesh\/","title":{"rendered":"Freed Bonded Laborers Thank Swami Agnivesh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/server2042.virtualave.net\/swamiagnivesh\/gwalior.html\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>GWALIOR, INDIA, July 10, 2002: The initiative of Swami Agnivesh freed 89 bonded labors and their families of almost ten years. The contractors subjected them to exploitation, molestation, rape and all sorts of inhuman treatment. &#8220;We had a sound sleep last night and the bright sun this morning is making us realize the end of the slavery era,&#8221; said laborers Batan Lal and Siddha after escaping to reach Swami Agnivesh&#8217;s Delhi office to narrate their despicable condition. Freed and gathered at Morar Hospital the laborers undergo medical checkup. It has been a sort of feast day for them with elaborate arrangements by the administration. There was jubilation among the liberated laborers. The laborers touched Swami Agnivesh&#8217;s feet as mark of respect. They said no one else could have dared to penetrate the invincible fortress of Devi Singh. The contractor hired laborers with assurance of paying US$2.05 per person per day. Instead, he paid them ration coupons worth $1.23 and never made payment in cash. In case of an accident or minor injury, a hefty sum of money was deducted from their wages in the name of treatment, said a laborer. Urging the administration to eliminate the evil from the society, Swami Agnivesh reported about 4,000 to 5,000 bonded laborers in Gwalior and Shivpuri region with similar exploitation.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE GWALIOR, INDIA, July 10, 2002: The initiative of Swami Agnivesh freed 89 bonded labors and their families,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}