A 14-year-old girl who was working as a domestic help with a couple in Gurugram has just been rescued after living through five months of gruesome torture and abuse at the hands of her employers. She was regularly beaten, burnt with hot metal tongs, slashed with blades, hit on her genitalia, kept in a state of near starvation, not allowed to speak to her relatives, and not paid a penny for the relentless work that she was made to do.
The brutalities that she was subjected to are stomach-turning, and if you have seen the pictures of her swollen lips, ravaged limbs, and gaping wounds on social media, you will want to dispense with the nicety of saying that her employers “allegedly” beat her up.
While the girl is now recovering at a hospital, Manish Khattar and Kamaljeet Kaur, the couple who enslaved and tortured her, have 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 harassment of child) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act(POCSO).
Once the news hit the headlines, the husband and the wife, both educated professionals, were also sacked from their respective places of work.