New Jersey Hindu Temple Builders Hit with Class/Collective Action Over Forced Labor Allegations [DISMISSED]

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A proposed collective and class action alleges the builders of a Hindu temple in New Jersey trafficked and then forced more than 200 Indian nationals to perform stonework and other construction after obtaining “R-1” religious visas to come to the United States. 

The 42-page lawsuit, filed by six plaintiffs, alleged defendants Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, Inc. (BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha) and CEO Kanu Patel; BAPS Mercer LLC; BAPS Robbinsville LLC; BAPS Fellowship Services, Inc.; and four individuals forced R-1 visa holders to build, improve upon and maintain the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir temple in Robbinsville, New Jersey, reportedly the largest Hindu temple in the country, over a period of many years. The suit alleges the defendants demanded R-1 workers work at the temple for more than 86 hours per week—“twelve and a half hours per day, seven days a week, with only a few days off per year,” according to the complaint. 

The lawsuit alleges the defendants told the United States government that the plaintiffs and other R-1 workers were coming into the country as religious “volunteers.” In realty, the individuals “performed solely manual—and not religious—labor for Defendants, nearly all were not members of Defendants’ denomination, and they were not volunteers,” the case says. 

In exchange for arduous work hours, R-1 visa holders were paid “an astonishing $450 per month, and even less when Defendants took illegal deductions,” the suit alleges. Per the case, the workers’ hourly pay rates sat at roughly $1.20 per hour, less than the federal minimum wage as far back as 1963. 

The lawsuit alleges the plaintiffs and other R-1 workers, upon coming into the United States, were “forced to live and work in a fenced, guarded compound which they were not allowed to leave unaccompanied by overseers affiliated with Defendants.” Further, the defendants, through their agents, “confiscated the workers’ passports as soon as they left the airport at JFK” upon their arrival and kept the passports for the entirety of the individuals’ time in New Jersey “to prevent the workers from leaving,” the suit says. 

“Defendants’ actions constitute forced labor, trafficking with respect to forced labor, document servitude, conspiracy, and confiscation of immigration documents in the course of and with the intent to engage in fraud in foreign labor contracting,” the lawsuit alleges. 

Per the complaint, security guards in BAPS uniforms were stationed on the temple premises where R-1 holders lived and worked, and cameras monitored the temple and recorded the individuals’ work activities. 

Still further, BAPS workers were “prohibited from speaking with outside visitors to the temple,” the case alleges. Failure to abide by this rule, the suit says, would result in the workers’ already minimal pay being reduced even further, or the workers being sent back to India. According to the complaint, supervisors told the workers that “police would arrest them if they left.” 

After one worker died while allegedly being subject to forced labor at the temple, other workers who organized to demand better working conditions and that the man’s remains be treated according to his religious values were retaliated against, the lawsuit says. 

“The Defendants intentionally caused the workers to reasonably believe that if they tried to leave their work and the temple compound, they would suffer physical restraint and serious harm,” the plaintiffs allege. “The Defendants also threatened the use of law or legal process to prevent the workers from leaving.”

The lawsuit alleges the defendants intentionally recruited workers from the Scheduled Caste, or Dalit, and other marginalized communities in India. From the complaint:

“People in the Scheduled Caste in India, for example, were formerly considered ‘untouchables’ and ‘endure near complete social ostracization.’ At the temple in New Jersey, temple leadership did what they could to remind these marginalized workers of their place in the social hierarchy. Defendant Swami Prasanand, for example, called the workers ‘worms,’ thus exacerbating the psychological coercion the workers experienced.” 

Alleged in the lawsuit are violations of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act and wage-and-hour abuses of the Fair Labor Standards Act and New Jersey labor laws. 

The complaint can be found below. The lawsuit looks to represent all individuals who worked in non-supervisory roles at the Robbinsville, New Jersey temple as construction and/or stone workers under R-1 visas between May 11, 2011 and the present. 

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