CHENNAI, INDIA - Light clouds blow through the new blue sky as Kanmani* loads her life into the waiting truck. In moments she will be on her way to freedom – leaving behind the rice mill where she and her husband were trapped in slavery.

Kanmani was forced to work at a rice mill in Vellore, India, with her husband and in-laws. The owner lured Kanmani’s impoverished husband into the facility through a small monetary advance, forcing him to work at the mill until the loan was repaid. But Kanmani’s husband soon discovered that repayment would be impossible - the loan was merely a trap to enslave him in a permanent system of forced labor. Kanmani was brought into bondage through their marriage and was enslaved with her husband, working for years to pay off his illegally inflated debt.

The owner, Venkatesh, limited his laborers’ movement, ensuring that they could not leave his facility to earn money and pay back the debt he claimed they owed. The only time Kanmani managed to return to her village, the owner quickly tracked her down and forced her to return to the mill. Venkatesh even denied his victims one of their most basic rights: When Kanmani’s father-in-law asked permission to leave the facility to vote in the national election, Venkatesh denied his request and snidely remarked that the slave could cast his vote in the rice mill.

The rice mill where Kanmani was forced to labor.