13-year-old maid locked in for 2 days
Oct 13,2013
NEW DELHI: Less than a month after the horrific tale of physical abuse of a minor domestic help became public, police on Monday rescued a 13-year-old girl from another south Delhi locality after she claimed to have been locked inside the house by her air hostess employer, who is currently away to Australia. Police said the victim managed to reach the terrace of the Sarojini Nagar apartment by slipping out from a ventilator and sought help from neighbors. Cops roped in an NGO for the rescue. The girl later told the Child Welfare Committee that she was beaten up several times with a belt, starved and locked inside the house. Neither she nor her family had been paid for the work. The girl and her employer, who works for Air India, are from Manipur, police said. The accused has been booked under sections relating to causing hurt, wrongful confinement, child labour and bonded labour. She would be arrested upon her return, said a senior cop. The victim, who said she was working for the past two years, alleged that she was forced to give her employer a massage for four hours everyday, from 11pm to 3am everyday. “I slept only for 5 hours and woke up at 8am to finish the household chores. She would be drunk at times and beat me up if I did not follow her instructions. I was too scared to complain,” the victim told the CWC. The girl, who has a slight deformity in one eye, has been sent to a shelter home in southeast Delhi and her parents are being informed. Her family lives in Senapati district of Manipur. Police found that the victim’s mother used to work for the airhostess’ family in Manipur. The girl was brought to Delhi by the airhostess’s sister, who will also be arrested for trafficking, police said. Cops said the girl’s parents were told she would be given a job, money and education. None of it was fulfilled. The victim is not literate, an officer said, adding that they had not received any proof of her age but estimate it to be 12 or 13. Police were told about the girl around 3.30pm on Monday. Her employer had left on Sunday and was supposed to return on Tuesday. The girl told police that she used a stool to get to the ventilator and escaped to the terrace. She then went to the adjacent terrace and raised an alarm. The neighbours then asked her to call the police from their telephone. Police arrived and asked an NGO, Butterflies, to counsel the girl and record her statement. “Based on the statement, we have registered a case under IPC sections 323 (causing hurt), 340 (wrongful confinement), 370 (slavery), 16 (bonded labour) and 14 (child labour) at Sarojini Nagar police station. She has also been booked under the juvenile justice Act ,” said B S Jaiswal, DCP south. “The girl was taken for a medical examination where no fresh injuries were found on her body. There were bruises on her face, arms and hands but they were old scars,” he said. On Tuesday, the girl was produced before the Child Welfare Committee, where her statement was recorded before the magistrate. “She did not give me or my family any salary. She would not let me talk to my mother even if I cried in front of her. She came home late and I had to massage her for hours. She would beat me if I said I was tired,” the girl said in her statement. “She also unleashed her dog on me when I lay on the bed during the day and did not let me sleep properly. When I objected to her misbehaviour, she slapped and banged my head against the wall,” the statement said. Police said the flat, C-16, had been allotted to a government officer who illegally let it out to the airhostess. He is being booked under 188 IPC, as he had not got police verification done for the ‘tenant’. On October 1, 15-year-old domestic help who was rescued from Vasant Kunj with severe head wounds, bite marks all over the body and a badly swollen face. Her employer, a senior executive, was arrested a day later. ———- SOURCE: TIMES OF INDIA
