Indian police have rescued more than 70 child workers during ongoing raids in one of the country’s hubs for cheap, artificial jewellery sold in the US, UK and European markets.

Authorities were tipped off when two children were spotted wandering alone near a train station in Junagadh, a city in the western state of Gujarat. The children had told police they were lost and had boarded a train 100km away in Rajkot after escaping a workshop in the city.

There they had worked “day and night” assembling imitation jewellery, police said, often sleeping in the same room with up to a dozen other children and being subjected to frequent beatings.

“They were kept in inhuman conditions and forced to do work that is not suitable to the nature of a child,” said Balram Meena, a deputy commissioner at Rajkot police.

So far 73 children – most aged between eight and 14 – have been found in the city, where about 700 imitation jewellery firms are based. Another 25 employers and traffickers have had cases registered against them, Meena said.

Most of the children were from the West Bengal state and had been brought to the city by middlemen promising to pay them about 6,000 rupees (£65) per month. They had been receiving about half that amount, Meena added.



Questioning of employers and the children was in turn revealing other workshops that employ children in the nearly £109m industry with which Rajkot has become synonymous.

Narendra Mehta, president of the Rajkot Imitation Jewellery Association, told Thomson Reuters Foundation the necklaces, bracelets and other pieces manufactured in the city were exported to the UK, Europe, the US, Pakistan and the Middle East.

He said the presence of children in the supply chain was difficult to detect because the industry operated along informal lines with most firms outsourcing work to homes around the city.

Most of these home workers were women who earned between 5,000 and 7,000 rupees per month, depending on how many pieces they produced.

Indian law prohibits the employment of children below the age of 14 in most occupations including jewellery manufacturing. But the International Labour Organisation estimated in 2015 there were about 5.7 million child workers in the country, more than half toiling in the agricultural industry.

Police operations that “free” hundreds of children are frequently reported but analysts say raids and criminal charges alone fail to address the factors that lead many families to give their children up to traffickers.

Administration and oversight of the industry is poor and some rescued children simply end up employed elsewhere. The prospect of a legal penalty deters some employers but drives others to push the work further underground, which can mean even worse conditions and less protection for employed children.