HYDERABAD, India -- Police have rescued hundreds of children working in hazardous industries in a southern Indian city despite laws that ban child labour.
In a series of raids on leather tanning and plastic factories in Hyderabad over the past 10 days, police rescued at least 350 children.
Child welfare officials accompanied some of the children Thursday as they were sent in a special railway car to be reunited with their parents in Bihar, one of India's poorest states.
Police arrested five men accused of supplying children to factory owners.
India has laws aimed at fighting child labour by making education compulsory up to age 14. But grinding poverty still causes many children to be pushed into work, with factory agents promising their wages to their parents.
