US Hindu sect BAPS accused of using Dalit labour
The workers, who lived in trailers hidden from view, had been promised jobs helping to build the temple with standard work hours and ample time off
Federal law enforcement agents descended on a massive temple in New Jersey on Tuesday after workers accused a prominent Hindu sect of luring them from India, confining them to the temple grounds and paying them the equivalent of about $1 an hour to perform gruelling labour in near servitude.
In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, lawyers for the labourers said Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, a Hindu sect known as BAPS that has close ties to India’s ruling party and has built temples around the world, had exploited possibly hundreds of low-caste men in the years-long construction project.