Tormentor arrested, but trauma lingers for Kishanganj teen who lost arm in bonded labour horror | Patna News

Patna: Six months after a machine tore away his left arm and captivity nearly claimed his life, 15-year-old Santosh sits silently at his home in Kishanganj – alive, but altered forever. His body has healed enough to return home, but his childhood did not make the journey back with him. What began as a brief step off a train to fetch water spiralled into a two-month descent into bonded labour, violence and abandonment across Haryana.The ordeal began at Bahadurgarh railway station in Haryana. Santosh was travelling with his father, Bhimlal Rishidev, on the Farakka Express in May last year. When the train stopped briefly, Santosh stepped down to fetch water, leaving his father inside the overcrowded compartment. In those few moments, their lives were irreversibly altered.“The train was so crowded that I did not realise my son had not returned until the train left the station,” Bhimlal said. By the time he noticed, the train had already pulled out.“The train left and then I stopped there,” Santosh said, describing the instant he realised he was alone.Without money, a cellphone or his father’s contact number, the boy was stranded in an unfamiliar place. “I did not have any money, and I did not know what to do. I felt that I won’t be able to go home. I sat in the unknown station for some time and decided to look for some food. I was not in the right state of mind and I could not find any police nearby whom I could ask for help,” Santosh said.After spending two days wandering around the station and nearby areas, Santosh met a man who offered him work. The promise was simple and tempting – two months of labour in exchange for Rs 10,000. Desperate to earn enough to return home, Santosh agreed.Instead of employment, he was dragged into captivity.He was taken to a remote village near the Yamuna river, surrounded by vast empty fields. There, Santosh was forced to work as a bonded labourer, feeding buffaloes and cutting fodder from dawn to dusk. The work was relentless and the punishment for slowing down was violent.“He beat me 10 to 15 times in a month. He used to hit me with a stick,” Santosh said. When he tried to escape once, he was caught, dragged back and beaten again, this time by the employer and his family members. Hunger, fear and pain became his daily companions.Back in Kishanganj, his family was living a parallel nightmare. His mother, Rekha Devi, slipped into constant anxiety. “You won’t understand my pain. I prayed to Mahadev day and night. Even though after the long wait, I thought my son was dead, I had faith that my son would be safe, wherever he is. ‘Santosh mera beta hai’,” she said.For nearly two months, the family ran from one police station to another in Haryana, receiving the same response each time – no boy matching Santosh’s description had been found.The cruelty reached its peak when Santosh’s left arm was pulled into a motorised fodder-cutting machine. The limb was severed at the elbow. Instead of rushing him to a hospital, his employer, Anil Kumar, wrapped the bleeding stump with cloth and applied local medicine.“He took me with him in his car and drove for 5 to 6 hours before dumping me in the middle of nowhere,” Santosh said.He was eventually found by strangers in Badauli and taken to a hospital in Nuh. But even there, Santosh was gripped by fear. Convinced he would be dragged back into bondage, he escaped from the hospital at night.“I didn’t stay anywhere and eat anything. I just wanted to walk and go home to Bihar,” he said.Barely clothed and bleeding, Santosh walked for kilometres through the hilly terrain of Haryana, clutching the stump of his arm. On July 29, two local teachers, Arvind Kumar and Rakesh Kumar, found him and alerted the police.The investigation gained momentum under the then SHO of Bahadurgarh GRP, Satya Prakash. After tracing Santosh’s movement from the railway station to the fields across Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, police arrested the accused, Anil Kumar, on Dec 30 following a nearly 200km manhunt.Santosh underwent three surgeries in Rohtak. A local judge, moved by his condition, extended support during his treatment. He finally returned home in Aug last year.The reunion was emotional but devastating. “When I saw my brother, I was shocked,” said his elder brother Jitendra. “If there was any other boy in my brother’s place, he wouldn’t have survived,” he added. Jitendra said while Santosh was once naive and innocent, the trauma forced a grim maturity upon him. “He now sees the world with a sensible, cautious eye, constantly wary of his surroundings,” Jitendra added.The family’s small shop remains closed, drained by the cost of searching and medical care. Santosh is yet to receive a bonded labour release certificate, a document essential to access welfare schemes. “The SDM or DM of the district where he was kept as a bonded labour should provide the certificate to the boy at the earliest,” a source said.Santosh is home, but the child who stepped off a train for a bottle of water never truly returned. In his place stands a survivor, carrying the memory of a journey measured not in distance, but in pain, blood and silence.