SUGAR CANE WORKERS IN THE MOTHERAND

When his daughter turned 12, Gighe Dutta decided this would be the year that he and his wife quit cutting sugar cane in the fields of western India. The work required a long migration, and his daughter would have to drop out of school — the first step for many girls on a lifelong path of abuse and poverty.

But his employer refused to let them quit. He and his friends beat up Mr. Dutta and forced him into a car, Mr. Dutta said. According to a report that he filed with a local government agency, the men drove him to a mill that says it supplies sugar to many international companies.

Mr. Dutta was locked there for two days, he said, and left to sleep on the floor to reconsider his decision.

The New York Times and Fuller Project obtained police reports and local government records, interviewed factory owners and collected the firsthand accounts of a half dozen families involved in recent kidnapping cases.

“Some say they will murder you. People say all sorts of things,” said Vinobai Taktode, a laborer who reported to the police that her husband had been kidnapped by his employer. “There are so many fears on our minds.”

Earlier this year The Times and The Fuller Project revealed that household-name companies and Indian politicians profit off a brutal system that forces children to work, pushes them into underage marriages and coerces women to get unnecessary hysterectomies to keep them working in the fields, unencumbered by menstruation or routine ailments.

One sugar cutter, Prahlad Pawar, said that his employer told him last year that he and others had not worked hard enough during the harvest.

So the employer ordered Mr. Pawar, his wife and children, and another family to work as his personal servants during the off-season, according to a report filed with a local government agency and interviews with family members. Mr. Pawar and his family eventually escaped, hiking for days toward their village, begging for food and sleeping in fields.

“People in the cities, who drink these cold drinks and eat chocolates, they are living their lives and they do not even think of us,” Mr. Pawar said. “I wish they, for once, tried working like us.”