Indrani Basu, TNN | Apr 18, 2011, 04.24am IST [from the Times of India:]

NEW DELHI: Delhi was again confronted with the ugly truth of child labour in its midst when a 10-year-old migrant working in a beedi-making unit died after being allegedly beaten up by his employer. The boy was about to be buried on Sunday morning when an alert cemetery caretaker called the police.

Moin, who had come from Madhubani in Bihar, had blue bruises all over his body, the police said. It’s not clear whether he died of asphyxiation or of injuries received on Saturday night.

Kaleemullah, the owner of the beedi unit being run from a rented room in northwest Delhi’s Bharat Nagar, is absconding since Saturday night. Neighbours claimed that the child had been working there for almost two months.

”It appears that the suspect beat the child on Saturday night and when he died, fled the spot. The child had been bathed and wrapped in cloth as per burial rites and was taken to the cemetery by Kaleemullah’s brother and others. We are interrogating them to check if they knew about the cause of Moin’s death,” said a senior police officer.

The cops are now waiting for Moin’s family to arrive from Bihar. “After the family identifies him, we will get a postmortem done,” he said.