HUNDREDS of tea pickers in West Bengal, the home of Darjeeling’s so-called “champagne of teas”, are dying of hunger.

Official government figures reveal that more than 570 have died in the past 15 months as tea gardens have closed, leaving impoverished plantation workers penniless and starving.

According to local campaigners, the true death toll is much higher. At Ramjhora estate, where The Sunday Times visited the widows and relatives of the dead last week, more than 300 are said to have starved to death since the garden was closed by its owner three years ago.

This year 50 have already died from anaemia, tuberculosis and malaria – deaths the estate doctor attributes to starvation. Marauding elephants scavenging for food have killed 12 more.

The workers were once a cause célèbre of the left, which railed at the 900 rupees (£11) a month they earned for working long days on the plantations. But the pickers themselves now yearn for those days to return.

Although they were poorly paid, they enjoyed free housing, education for their children, food and healthcare. Since the owner has gone they have no income at all and most are surviving on charitable handouts of 6lb of rice per month to feed families of five and more.

The pickers blame the former malik, or owner, who by abandoning the garden has, they say, taken away their livelihoods and left them on the brink of starvation. There is no alternative work.

The owners say falling tea prices are behind the decline. Local activists, in turn, blame the main political parties. They say strikes led by politicians from the Congress party of Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, and his communist coalition partners – and their use of gangsters to demand political donations – have driven out the owners of 16 tea gardens in Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri districts.

In their absence the same politicians have formed “organising management committees” that rule the estates through fear and line their own pockets. They pay the pickers 35 rupees a day for one or two days a month, while their illegal profits from the sale of the crop often exceed £5,000 each, according to the campaigners.

A human trafficking ring linked to local politicians was recently exposed after smugglers were caught trying to kidnap the daughters of three tea pickers. They confessed that they had promised to sell the girls to a Delhi brothel for £500 each. The parents of the girls were approached by their tea garden’s management committee and told that they would be killed if their daughters gave evidence in court.

The government has put together a £500m rescue package for the gardens. But the campaigners claim most of the money will go to absentee owners to help them reopen their gardens rather than rescue the workers from starvation.

Activists from the Save the Gardens, Save the Workers organisation are scathing about the government’s failure to help the pickers at Ramjhora garden, below the Darjeeling hills. The owner’s lease was cancelled in 2004 after he abandoned the garden and the estate reverted to government control.

Since then between 300 and 400 workers have died from starvation-related illnesses and the garden itself has reverted to jungle. Last week the signs of hunger were all too evident. Parents pointed to their children’s protruding ribs, bulging eyes and distended stomachs.

Sanjay Gurung, 33, said his 30-year-old wife Bishni, the mother of his two young sons, had died of tuberculosis earlier this year. “She wasn’t getting the proper food she needed to keep going. We were eating some rice and salt, but it wasn’t enough and she became so weak. Before the garden closed, no one died from TB,” he said.

Rita Dey, 26, said her husband Robin had died eight months ago, leaving her to raise their two children, aged eight and three. “When the garden closed we searched for work but couldn’t find anything. Gradually he became weaker. He became mad and angry and ill. He worried about feeding the children. He was getting a day’s work occasionally when there were green leaves on the tea bushes. His mother and father, who also worked here, died from hunger. Eventually Robin died too.”

Today she and her daughter Reika are suffering from TB. “Reika has fever and I’m so weak I can hardly walk. I think we will die,” she said.

Dr Jagabandhu Das, who was posted to the garden’s hospital last April, said: “People are dying here because of starvation. They’re suffering from malnutrition and anaemia, which is the main cause of death. Their kidneys fail and they die; 80% of the people here are anaemic.”

Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury, one of the campaigners, said the government had effectively condemned the pickers to death by failing to help. “The government could help, but it doesn’t. They are killing the tea pickers by doing nothing,” she said.

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