‘CM saheb help, they’re torturing us’

The torturers were well prepared for Pragnesh Soni, an Odhav resident, who was prodded into the biting trap of high-interest loans and sadistic recovery agents. The room he was pushed into had all the implements to make a grown man scream in abject helplessness: hockey sticks, belts, and whips. “I was taken to the office of the moneylender and escorted to a private room above his office, in Odhav,” said Soni, an auto-rickshaw driver. “I was tortured there by five people for several hours.” 
Vinod Shah, an Ambikanagar resident, was picked up by his moneylender’s henchmen who were as nonchalant about the operation as the police would be about ambushing a criminal. Shah was taken to the house of his moneylender, Kalpesh Gor. “I was first assaulted in the house and then taken to an adjoining room,” Shah said. “I was beaten and held captive in the room for hours.”
Ahmedabad is home to thousands of people like Soni and Shah. They are tormented by private financiers who squeeze out fantastical returns from their victims, and do not care if life seeps out in the process. In fact, the moneylenders realise that the fear of death is a potent ally in extracting cash. That is why they have established more than 100 torture cells across the city and on its outskirts to profit from blood money.

Take the case of Shah, for instance.
He said that he borrowed Rs20,000 from a moneylender called Kalpesh Gor two years ago. He has already paid Rs1.20 lakh but is still languishing in the moneylender’s list of defaulters!
Indeed, the financiers are particularly astute in lending money: they know they can harvest extravagant profits from people who borrow in desperation — often in emergencies like medical crises. Such borrowers have no option other than accepting interest rates as high as 50%. 
When the debt takes the victims to the brink of death, they have the waiver option. That is, they can waive their rights over their property, jewellery, or vehicles and transfer ownership of the assets to the moneylenders.
But a former moneylender who spoke to DNA sought to dispel the notion that torture is used willy-nilly by his ex-fraternity. “The torture room is the last resort,” the man said. “A defaulter is usually given four to five chances before being roughed up.”
But are those chances enough for someone who is being hammered by an outrageous interest rate?  For example, Soni was tortured although he had paid more than Rs1lakh to his moneylender, called Fauji, for a loan of Rs70,000.