(Descriptions of physical violence. Reader discretion advised.)
“The police came to my house and told me what had happened with my younger daughter. People helped me video call her in the hospital. She couldn’t speak. She just showed her scars. There were marks on her face,” said the mother of the minor domestic help who was mercilessly beaten up allegedly by her employers in Gurugram.
The 17-year-old girl, originally from Jharkhand, was rescued on 7 February and is undergoing treatment at a Gurugram hospital, while the couple has been arrested for alleged torture and assault.
The minor’s mother on 10 February reached Delhi after undertaking a strenuous train journey from her village, carrying a plastic packet with a couple of clothes for luggage. The Quint met the frail-looking woman at the New Delhi Railway Station, where she arrived with three officers from Jharkhand Crime Branch's Anti Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) at 11.30 am on Friday.
Taken aback by the clamour of the capital city on a Friday morning or the sheer details of what her young daughter was going through for the last five months at the hands of her employer, the mother seemed to have internalised the grief and found herself at a loss of words.
“I haven’t spoken to my daughter since she left from our village in Jharkhand,” the woman lamented, breaking into tears as the AHTU officers sought more information from her as part of their investigation into the matter.
Dressed in a purple saree with a red scarf wrapped around her head, the woman spoke in Sadri language, which AHTU officers and members of the Shakti Vahini NGO translated for The Quint.
'Want To Take My Elder Daughter Back Too'
"My brother told me that he would get her a job in Delhi. He didn't mention how much she would earn or what the job would entail,” the woman said, corroborating the statement of the complainant, Pinki Malik, the Centre Administrator of the One Stop Centre. In her police complaint, Pinki had alleged that the minor help’s employers “would not give her food, and give her rape threats too.”
The mother of the minor claims that her brother has been in Delhi for the last 10 years and works in a placement agency. "He has got many girls from the village employed in cities, including my elder daughter", she told The Quint.
"My elder daughter has been in Delhi for three years. My brother said he will get my younger daughter employed too. My elder daughter, who is 20 years old, had once sent Rs 10,000 a few years ago. But I have not been in touch with her for some time. I do not even know where she is. I want to take her back too but I will have to ask my brother first,” the mother said.
Back home in their village in Jharkhand, the parents of the minor domestic help work on a pocket of land spread across four acres. Since it is mostly jungle area, they plant Mahua trees, the flowers of which are a common food item among the Gond tribe, to which her family belongs.
'Assaulted With Blades, Sticks, Hot Tongs'
In a bid to find a job and send some money home, the woman’s brother got her younger niece to work as a domestic help in Gurugram. Little did they know that the minor will be manhandled to this degree.
By 2 pm on 10 February, the woman had been taken to a Gurugram police station, where her brother was also present.
Sharing visuals of the girl’s injury, activist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj pointed out at the burn and injury marks on her face, neck, arms and feet.
Bhardwaj told The Quint, “I had received a tip about the incident and had informed authorities. The girl herself was unable to inform anybody as she did not have a phone. When I met her, she was severely injured and even her feet were swollen."
She had tweeted, “She shared with me unimaginable horror. Blades, sticks, hot tongs – I don't think anything was left in assaulting this child. All this for - not finishing work on time. She wasn't paid a single penny for months of work."
'They Would Disrobe Me and Hit Me in My Private Parts'
According to the FIR copy, accessed by The Quint, the minor girl claimed, "Both husband and wife had been treating me inhumanely for five months... and even hit me with hot iron tongs. They did not give me proper meals to eat, they would only give me a little bit of rice. They would make me work all day. They would disrobe me and hit me in my private parts. They kept me confined in the house and did not let me speak to my family."
She also said that she had been working there for five months and would take care of their three-year-old daughter.
Meanwhile, Gurugram Police Spokesperson Subhash Boken had told The Quint: “The girl was being contained at home and assaulted by her employers in Gurugram for the last five months. The couple has now been arrested under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), Section 342 (wrongful confinement) of the Indian Penal Code, Section 75 (cruelty to child) and Section 79 (exploitation of a child employee) of the Juvenile Justice Act, and Section 12 (sexual harrassment of child) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) Act.”
After the incident came to light, the founder of the PR agency that the husband worked for, tweeted that he has been sacked with immediate effect.
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