Four boys. A stone quarry. Every morning they climbed down. They told themselves: one step at a time. Someone will come.
They were taken when the rains failed and their families had nothing left. A contractor paid an advance no one could repay. For months, they chipped stone in the dark. MTN's team pulled them out on a Tuesday morning.
“Going down into the quarry every morning — you count the steps. Twelve steps down. You think: twelve steps up tonight. And then tomorrow, twelve steps down again. One day our field supervisor said: today you don't go down. Today you go home. I did not understand what home meant anymore. I am learning again.”
The harvest had failed for the second year. There was nothing left to borrow against and nothing left to sell. When a contractor arrived in the village with cash in hand and a promise of wages from a work site a few hours away, Raju's father signed the paper without reading it. He had no other way to feed the family through the season.
Raju was fourteen. He went with the contractor the next morning. Three other boys from nearby villages went the same week — Samuel, twelve; Anand, thirteen; Thomas, eleven. None of them knew each other. They met at the quarry.
The site was illegal — no permits, no safety equipment, no records. They were told their work would clear the advance. Each week the contractor produced a ledger with numbers that never moved in their favour. Transport costs. Food deductions. A new charge added for equipment they had never seen. The boys could not read the ledger. The contractor knew this.
Every morning they descended into the quarry pit. Raju counted the stone steps each time — twelve down, twelve up. He did it to keep his mind clear. By month three he could do it without looking at his feet.
The work stripped the skin from their hands. The stone dust settled in their lungs. Samuel developed a cough that did not go away. Thomas, the youngest, stopped speaking very much. At night they slept in a corrugated shed that was hot in the day and cold at night and always smelled of dust.
What kept them going was not a plan. Plans required information they did not have — where they were, what day it was, whether anyone was looking. What kept them going was something smaller and more stubborn than a plan. One more day. Twelve steps down. Twelve steps up. The sun comes up again. You are still here.
MTN's field team received a tip from a community contact who had passed the site and noticed children among the workers. Coordination with district child labour enforcement officers followed. On a Tuesday morning, four boys were escorted out of the quarry. Raju asked, while they were still walking, whether he could see his mother.
He saw her four days later.
The photo on this page is from three months after their rescue. They are on the residential home compound, laughing, climbing on each other's shoulders. Thomas is smiling. He has started talking again — quite a lot, the house parents say.
Twelve steps up. Every day, twelve steps up.
- •Four boys aged 11–15, bonded to an illegal stone quarry through advance payments made to their families during a failed harvest season
- •Working 10–12 hours a day breaking and hauling stone — no wages paid, debt declared unpayable by the contractor
- •Sleeping in a shed at the quarry site, no schooling, no medical care
- •Hands cracked and cut from daily stone work; persistent coughs from the dust
- •Families were told the boys were 'earning off' the advance — no fixed end date was ever given
- •Youngest was eleven years old
- →MTN's field team received information from a local community contact about boys being held at an illegal quarry site
- →Coordinated rescue with district child labour enforcement officers — four boys recovered
- →Immediate medical check: all four had respiratory symptoms from stone dust; iron deficiency identified in two
- →Families contacted within 48 hours; legal notice served to contractor; case filed under bonded labour and child labour statutes
- →Boys enrolled in MTN's residential rehabilitation programme — trauma care, catch-up schooling, and nutrition support
- →Contractor's operation reported to district authorities; site subsequently inspected and shut down
- ✓All four boys in residential care — safe, fed, sleeping without the sound of quarry machinery
- ✓Medical treatment completed; respiratory symptoms resolving with rest and clean air
- ✓Enrolled in school — two boys are catching up to grade level, two are ahead of where expected given the interruption
- ✓Three have made contact with families; one family situation is still being assessed by MTN's field team
- ✓The photo on this page is from three months after rescue. They are playing. That is the whole point.
Name has been changed to protect privacy. Statistics are reported by programme teams and reviewed at our annual audit.