JUDGMENT

BHAGWATI, J. :— This is yet another case which illustrates forcibly what we have said on many an occasion that, it is not enough merely to identify and release bonded labourers but it is equally, perhaps more, important that after identification and release, they must be rehabilitated, because without rehabilitation, they would be driven by poverty, helplessness and despair into serfdom once again. Poverty and destitution are almost perennial. features of Indian rural life for large numbers of unfortunate ill-starred humans in this country and it would be nothing short of cruelty and heartlessness to identify and release bonded labourers merely to throw them at the mercy of the existing social and economic system which denies to them even the basic necessities of life such as food, shelter and clothing. It is obvious that poverty is a curse inflicted on large masses of people by our malfunctioning socio-economic structure and it has the disastrous effect of corroding the soul and sapping the moral fibre of a human being by robbing him of all basic human dignity and destroying in him the higher values and the finer susceptibilities which go to make up this wonderful creatio