SANGHAR, July 7: Police got 21 bonded labourers, including women and children, released after a raid on Wali Mohammad Keerio village on Monday.

The raid was conducted on the orders of district and sessions judge Amjad Bohio who had received a complaint from one Bhooro Bheel, stating that landlord Haji Hussain Keerio on whose land he and his relatives had been working for 12 years had kept them in illegal detention.

He said that the landlord neither paid them anything for their labour nor allowed them to move about freely. Landlord Haji Hussain Keerio dismissed the liberated peasants claims as a farce and said that he had extended them Rs420,000 as loan. He said that they were not bonded nor confined in one place but were free to move.

He said that by levelling allegations about bonded labour they wanted to eat up his loan amount and demanded inquiry into their allegations by a judge or human rights organisation.

SHO of Jhol Mehmood Ahmed Bhatti who raided the village produced the recovered peasants in the sessions court and the judge allowed them to go anywhere they liked.