Little hands at the liquor still: How children were reportedly made to work making and bottling liquor in a factory in MP

It’s nauseating at first... the stench. But in a day or two, you get used to it,” says 14-year-old Vineet Nayak in hushed tones. The young boy (whose name has been changed on request) has been filling country liquor in quartersized bottles at a plant of Som Distilleries at Sehatganj village in Raisen, Madhya Pradesh. He calls his work “pauwa jamana”— setting the bottles upright so that alcohol falls into them. He did that for nine hours a day.

Wearing jeans and tee shirt, Vineet sits with a slight stoop at his home. He says he dropped out of school. Instead of going to class, the thin boy would reach the distillery at 8 am and work till 5 pm. After a long day of strenuous, hazardous work, he would go home with Rs 350. He saw the hands of his friends had turned white, the skin had peeled. “It could have been the chemicals,” he says. He worked there only for a fortnight. Before he had to spend more days in that reeking plant, before his hands too got scalded, he was rescued.

On June 15, a team of officials of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), a nonprofit founded by Kailash Satyarthi, rescued 59 children—39 boys and 20 girls—from the distillery, in the biggest busting of child labour racket in the liquor industry in the past several years. About 40 other children “escaped” during the raid, according to officials at the rescue operation.

Almost 100 children, aged between 12 and 17 years, were allegedly employed by country-liquor maker Som Distilleries at its Raisen plant. The company is part of the Som Group that also owns the listed entity Som Distilleries and Breweries, which is among the 10 biggest distillers in India and the largest in Madhya Pradesh. For years, the children were allegedly brought into the factory in school buses. To hide the fact that they were working there, they were made to wear uniforms of a school that Som runs on the premises, says an NCPCR official. The kids were making, bottling and packaging liquor for up to 12 hours for daily wages of Rs 300-500.

According to documents from the state excise and labour departments that ET has seen, the skin on the hands of several children were burnt, infected, or melting away due to constant contact with raw spirits and chemicals.

“What Som has done is a crime of child labour, exploitation of children, cruelty to children, keeping children in bonded labour. These are serious crimes,” says Bhuwan Ribhu, lawyer, child rights activist and former general secretary of BBA. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986 prohibits children below 14 years from being employed in hazardous occupations.

After the raid, Madhya Pradesh’s excise department suspended Som’s liquor licence for 20 days. However, on Tuesday, Som got a stay order from the high court and resumed operations at its distillery.



CHILDREN AT WORK
Young Vineet lives with his father, four sisters and grandparents at the village of Gopisur, 25 km from Bhopal. His mother died last year. The distillery is about 5 km from his home. His father, Ketan Nayak, is a farmer. He says he did not know his son had been working in the distillery. “I had gone to Rajasthan for some work when he started working. I wouldn’t have allowed him to work in a liquor factory. We are well-off,” he says.

Unlike Ketan Nayak, Jaswant Singh says he knew his daughter Hemlata was working in the factory. “We have to earn money. Why would I stop her?” he asks. Hemlata now helps her father in the fields.

Sapna Nath, 16, too worked in the plant. She lives in a dilapidated brick house at Sehatganj with her mother. Her two brothers work in farms but, her mother says, it is Sapna who runs the house. She stuck hologram stickers on bottle caps for 10 hours a day at the distillery—for Rs 300. Sapna rues that she has lost her job and pay. “Aaraam ka kaam tha (It was easy work),” she says. The officials asked us why we were working there, she recalls. “Didn’t we know this was illegal, they asked.”

Will she go back to working at the distillery? “How can she go now? We have been told that if the children are sent to work there, the parents will be sent to jail,” says her mother.



RAISING THE ALARM
Alarm bells have been ringing for a while. Earlier this year, an official at Raisen’s Child Welfare Committee (CWC) spotted a child being sneaked into the factory. “We had been receiving information from villagers who suspected that children were being taken to the factory in school buses at odd hours,” says Atul Krishna Dubey, chairman of CWC, Raisen.

On March 19, Dubey and some officials from the state labour department went inside the distillery. “Within 15 minutes, we found two kids working there,” he says. Dubey informed the local police. When the police checked, company officials told them that the children were merely bringing lunch for their parents who were employed at the distillery. The matter wasn’t pursued.

Meanwhile, in Delhi, BBA director Manish Sharma and his team were doggedly following the goings-on at the distillery for more than a year. A small team was stationed at Raisen to monitor the factory round the clock and track the movement of children.

“We gauged that about 100 kids were employed in the distillery. I wrote to NCPCR. Its team came to inspect the premises on June 15,” says Sharma. “When we entered the plant, there was such a terrible stench of chemicals and spirits that it was difficult for us to remain there for even 10 minutes. It’s unbelievable that kids aged 12-15 years were made to work there for 12 hours.”

“We found little girls wearing heavy makeup. They said they were asked to deck up, possibly to make them look older,” says Sharma.

He alleges that he faced significant resistance from the company’s workers: “They are extremely guarded. Even if you stand for more than half an hour at a roadside dhaba opposite the distillery, the guards would come and question you.”

Som Distilleries denied this in an emailed response to ET. An executive from its compliance team said the company “was very open to investigation and co-operated fully with all the authorities”. A spokesperson said Som runs a school with 500 students on the distillery premises as part of its “social initiative”.

The number of child labourers in the country is staggering. As part of its pledged support to the UN’s sustainable development goals, India has to eliminate child labour by 2025. However, there were an estimated 7.8 million child labourers in 2023, according to the Kailash Satyarthi Foundation. Most of them are employed in textile and automobile industries, construction sector and agriculture. Cases of child labour have been rare in the highly regulated liquor industry.

“I have not come across a case like this in my entire career,” says Priyank Kanoongo, chairman, NCPCR. He has filed an FIR against the company and a case in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. “We will ensure the conviction of the perpetrators,” he says.

Kanoongo blames the district collectorate at Raisen for ignoring child labour at the distillery. Raisen’s district magistrate Arvind Dubey did not respond to calls and messages from ET.

The Raisen incident, a stark tale of exploitation and poverty, also points to alleged complicity of officials. An excise duty official has to be present at all liquor factories and distilleries. Som did, too. Abhijit Agrawal, excise commissioner, Madhya Pradesh, says, “We have taken initial action by suspending the official and other subordinate staff posted there. Since they were working there it was their clear moral responsibility (to flag child labour in the distillery).” He adds that Som has flouted norms earlier as well: “A case was related to irregularities in supply chain. The company’s directors were found guilty along with certain department officials. In another case, which was closed some years ago, the company had installed tanks without permission from the government or the department, and notices were issued.” In its response to ET, Som denied there were irregularities in its supply chain or that it set up tanks without approval.

In its replies to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the capital markets regulator, Som Distilleries and Breweries Ltd (SDBL) has distanced itself from Som Distilleries Private Ltd (SDPL), which it calls “a vendor”. SDPL is a promoter company and owns 9.28% in SDBL, according to the latest data from the Bombay Stock Exchange. SDBL buys raw liquor or extra neutral alcohol (ENA) from SDPL and, according to its latest annual report, is “able to exercise significant control” of the company.

In response to queries from ET, SDBL says it has “terminated the services of the vendor (SDPL)”, suspended key functionaries of its HR department and “given a warning” to the general manager of the plant. Meanwhile, what happens to the children? The rescued children should get a compensation of Rs 20,000 each under the Child Labour Act, says Ribhu. For children below 14 years of age, one adult member from their family should get alternative employment. “Under Section 370A, this is a crime of exploitation and trafficking. Criminal prosecution would result in a compensation of at least Rs 3 lakh under the National Legal Service Authority scheme of victim compensation,” he adds. Apart from that, a child is entitled to a compensation of up to Rs 3 lakh under the central sector scheme of bonded labour.

“We have been told that we would get Rs 35,000. But we have no Aadhaar card nor bank passbook,” says Sapna’s mother.

Kanoongo says the district collector should enrol every child for Aadhaar and open bank accounts in their name so that compensation and back wages (calculated according to rules under the bonded labour scheme and the child labour prohibition fund) can be deposited in that account.

Three weeks after the raid, Vishal says he has got a message from SBI that Rs 15,000 has been deposited in his account. However, the children will not be able to access the money before they turn 18.

“What good is that? We need the money now,” says Sapna’s mother.

Children should also be given trauma care and counselling. Dubey of Raisen’s CWC says he and his team are still collating social investigation reports of the kids.

They should also go back to school. Vishal is again making his way to the plant—not to work this time, but to study in the school on its premises.