A hotel in Mumbai city was busted for illegally employing under-aged children. Authorities found 11 child workers under the age of 18.

On Monday, the police rescued 11 children from a hotel in Mumbai after they got word that the owner had employed children.

The police raided the hotel before taking the children for a medical examination at a police hospital.

The hotel owner says he didn’t know the children were below the age of 18 and that they did not provide documents to prove their age.

[Ranji Shetty, Hotel Owner]: (male, Hindi)
"They caught the children and said you cannot keep children below the age of 18 as employees. But some of the children are above 18. Before we employed them, we asked about their age. They said that they were above 18. Some of them say they've been in the city for a long time, so we employed them."

Sources say more than 12 million children below the age of 14 work as domestic servants, or in other laborious jobs, such as in stone quarries, embroidery units, mines, carpet weaving units, tea stalls, restaurants, and hotels.

A law prohibiting employing children in homes and in the hospitality industry came into effect in October 2006. However, there have only been 1,680 prosecutions and not a single conviction.