Judgment

DESAI, J.:- One. Mukesh Advani, Advocate practising in-this Court addressed a letter to one of the Judges of this Court on September 23, 1982 annexing thereto a cutting from the Indian Express dated September 14, 1982 depicting the horrid plight of the bonded labour working in stone quarries at Raisen in Madhya Pradesh.

2. Broadly stated the allegations were that the contractors who operate the mines recruit labour force from Tamilnadu. Everyone recruited to work was paid roughly an advance of Rs, 1,000/- and then brought to work at the mines. This amount of Rs. 1,000/- is reimbursable by deductions spread over from month to month from the wages payable to the bonded labourers, but the method of accounting is so manipulated that the debt of Rs. 1,000/- is never wiped out, and on the contrary it increases by geometrical proportion. The workman goes deeper into the mire of indebtedness with the result that the octopus hold of the contractor becomes all enveloping and the workman becomes a bonded labour. The working conditions, to say the least, were of the 18th century vintage. There is no weekly holiday. Sanitary conditions are in deplorable state. During the rainy season the