A Sunday Mirror investigation found that kids earning less than £1 a day on plantations are often trafficked to big cities - and parents sometimes SELL them Girls as young as 11 who pick tea leaves for Tetley are being trafficked into a nightmare life of slavery and sexual abuse. Youngsters earning less than £1 a day working on plantations in India are tempted by promises of a better life as domestic servants for middle class families in big cities. The trafficking gangs even trick their poverty-stricken parents into SELLING their children to them, a disturbing investigation reveals. They promise the youngsters will earn so much money they can regularly send cash back home. But many of them end up as slaves, sold by the traffickers into homes where they are often beaten and used for sex in a scandal that has been dubbed the “Tea-Maids” trade. Now a child rescue organisation has begun tracking down tea-picking children who have gone missing. It has saved 20 youngsters so far, some taken from the vast Nahorani plantation in the Assam province part-owned by Tetley’s parent firm, Tata Global Beverages, and the World Bank’s investment arm. Today Tetley confirmed that rescued children had been working for one of its contractors. It insisted it takes the safety of workers seriously. But anti-slavery campaigners fear there are still hundreds more youngsters to be rescued – and blamed low plantation wages for fuelling the trade. Workers on the Nahorani estate are paid the same as all other tea workers in Assam – just 94 rupees, 91p, a day. Kailash Satyarthi, founder of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan child rescue movement which helped free the girls, said the tea companies had to take responsibility for the conditions that have led to the trafficking scandal. He said: “The owners of these international tea estates don’t care for these people. Forget decent wages, they don’t pay survival wages.” He said that while tea companies were raking in huge profits, traffickers were operating under their noses to trick the girls and their families with dreams of good jobs and better living conditions. Mr Satyarthi said: “The reality is endless slavery. The reality is abuse.” Investigators from Guardian Films accompanied the rescuers on their mission. And dramatic pictures show the moment one slave is rescued and reunited with her father (see case study below). She later claimed she had suffered years of abuse and had been raped by one owner. The Nahorani estate is one of a group of 24 estates in Assam owned by Amalgamated Plantations, a firm formed in 2007 by the giant Tata ­corporation to run its Indian tea estates. Tetley insist the blend of tea picked there does not end up in a British cuppa and that those leaves are sourced from other tea-farms in India. Tata Global Beverages confirmed its Tetley brands sold elsewhere bought tea from the Nahorani estate. The company said it was concerned to hear about what it described as a “serious and sensitive” issue. In a statement, it added: “Tata Global Beverages is committed to the fair and ethical treatment of people across our supply chain and we take their welfare seriously.” One of the slave girls was found with only hours to spare before being moved on by her trafficker. Somila Tanti was only 16 when she went missing from her home near the Nahorani plantation three years ago. In that time she claims she was held captive and sexually assaulted. She had been sold for £250 to her third and last owners, this time a respectable middle class family in Delhi, when the child rescue team tracked her down, accompanied by her father Ramesh. Somila’s trafficker had just threatened to move her on again, this time into prostitution in Bombay, when her rescuers swooped. Somila and Ramesh broke down and wept as they were reunited. Her trafficker was arrested. Somila said: “I was told ‘come with us and you will earn good money’. We were poor. I thought it would be good.” Instead, she found herself unable to escape. Her first owner was a doctor who did not mistreat her but would not let her go home. After 11 months, she was moved. “I was abused badly at the second place,” she said. “This man was very bad. He used to touch me in my private parts and try to rape me.” She never had a room of her own with any of her owners and had to sleep on floors with no bedding. “I cried and I missed my parents – but I had a deep feeling in my heart that one day my father would come to search for me,” she said. Source: mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/tetley-tea-girls-scandal-girls-3197106