Close to 300 workers from India and Bangladesh are among some 10,000 others who are victims of forced labor practices in the United States, a report by the Human Rights Center of University of California, Berkeley, and Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group working to end slavery, says.

The report ‘Hidden Slaves – Forced Labor in the United States,’ says “At any given time 10 thousand or more people work as forced laborers in scores of cities and towns across the country. And it is likely that actual number is much higher, reaching into tens of thousands.”

The report says 70 victims came from India and 200 others from Bangladesh. In contrast, thousands came from China. The report’s authors focused on prostitution, domestic work, agriculture and factory work.

Among the Indian cases that figure in the report is that of Lakireddy Bali Reddy, a wealthy businessman from Andhra Pradesh who brought workers from his village and sexually exploited several young girls.

Lakireddy pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to immigration fraud and illegal sexual activity and agreed to pay $2 million to restitution of many of his victims.

In all his victims received a total of $8.9 million in settlement of civil claims, according to the report.

Reddy was a Berkeley landlord who was charged with raping young girls whom he had brought from Andhra Pradesh ostensibly to work in his businesses.

In another case study, the report cited the case of the John Pickle factory in Oklahoma which employed several Indian workers through Al-Samit International, a labor-recruitment firm. On arrival in the U.S. the workers’ travel documents were forcibly taken from them and they were made to work 12 to 16 hours a day, six days a week, well below the stipulated minimum wages. The working conditions forced some 50 workers to escape and eventually file a civil suit against their employers. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency in charge of investigating and filing cases related to employment discrimination, filed a case against the company.

(Compiled from news dispatches by M. Chooki)