During the week, he was hustled away and — as he later learnt painfully — robbed of his kidney.

Shakeel says he was waiting at Majdoor Chowk on January 17, looking for work, desperate that he hadn’t earned anything in two days and was down to Rs 50 in his pocket, when a bearded man approached him for a painting job at Ballabhgarh (Haryana) offering Rs 150, accommodation, and food. He says the man took him by bus to India Gate, where an Esteem car was waiting.

“There were two more men sitting in the car. They took us to a secluded house. We were locked in and a fair, heavy-built man with a gun was put on guard. They provided us ration and asked to cook ourselves.

“We were told there are cameras to watch us and we’d be killed if we spoke to each other.”

He says on January 21, about 1 am, he was woken up and bundled into a Santro car, driven around for “two-three hours” and “dropped in front of a gate” — “they rang the doorbell thrice. The security guard came out in a couple of minutes and pushed me inside the house.

“I was asked to lie down and my blood was tested. There were other men lying down there, but I was too scared to talk. They gave me an injection and I lost consciousness.

“I woke around 3 am with a tingling pain in the lower abdomen.”

For the next three days, till police found him on Thursday, he was given tea and four slices of bread once a day.

On the bed next to Shakeel’s lies Saleem, 30, staring at the ceiling. He, too, was lured — from Bhagpat Adda in Meerut — on the excuse of work and wages. He says he was thinking of earning something for his children, Arshi, 10, and Asif, 8. His family does not know what has happened to him.

Waseem Ahmad, the third rescued victim, had been operated upon barely hours before Thursday night’s raid. A labourer from Indira Colony near Ahmedabad, Ahmad was in Delhi looking for work.