Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › India

Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India

Supreme Court of India · India · 1983-12-16 · National court

Citation: (1984) 3 SCC 161
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Must the State identify, free and rehabilitate bonded migrant workers in the Faridabad quarries?

What the court decided

Yes. The Court issued detailed directions for release, rehabilitation and enforcement of labour laws.

In plain language

Workers brought from other states to stone quarries near Delhi were trapped by debts. The Supreme Court ordered the government to free them and enforce labour laws.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Pekerja yang didatangkan dari negara bagian lain ke tambang batu dekat Delhi terjerat utang. MA memerintahkan pemerintah membebaskan mereka dan menegakkan hukum ketenagakerjaan.

Pertanyaan: Apakah negara wajib mengidentifikasi, membebaskan dan memulihkan pekerja migran terjerat utang di tambang batu Faridabad?

What happened afterwards

  • 1983-12-16: Judgment.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/in-bandhua-1983/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.