Juvenile maid’s case: Medical board member hints at possible torture

Doctors also take samples of her family to verify if they are her actual parents

ISLAMABAD: A member of the medical board at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) on Monday said it was possible that 10-year-old house maid Tayyaba was a victim of torture and abuse.

“Tayyaba received multiple burns and other injuries at the back, face, legs and abdomen,” Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University (SZAMBU) Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Javed Akram told The Express Tribune.  “However, it is for the police to decide whether these injuries were result of torture or not,” he added.

Dr Akram was part of a new board constituted on January 6 to reexamine the child on the request of a district magistrate. Earlier, a medico-legal report of the same hospital had also confirmed injuries sustained by the child.

However, the medical examination had ignored the burn wounds at her back caused by some iron rod or ladle. “The girl was confabulating and kept on changing her statements as she appeared to be traumatised,” Dr Akram added.

Meanwhile, the board also took the girl’s blood samples to verifyher relationship with those claiming to be her parents. The child maid was brought to the facility with her alleged parents and a younger brother early in the morning.

Doctors also took samples of her family to verify if they were her actual parents. Further, another couple from Toba Tek Singh arrived at Pims claiming to be Tayyaba’s parents. At least five families including a widow and a grandmother have been claiming to be the child’s parents.

Tayyaba was employed by Additional District and Sessions Judge Raja Khurram Ali Khan in Islamabad. The judge and his wife, Maheen Zafar, were accused of keeping the girl in wrongful confinement, burning her hand, beating her with a ladle, detaining her in a storeroom, and threatening her with even worse.

The gruesome story of the juvenile maid was picked up by the media after it went viral on social media on December 29. Subsequently, the police registered a case and the Islamabad High Court’s top judge also took notice and directed the registrar to initiate an inquiry.

But the supposed father of the girl pardoned her tormentor and went missing with the child from a women’s shelter. The Supreme Court took suo motu notice of the incident; overruled the ‘pardon’ granted to the judge and his wife and directed the police to present the girl.

On Sunday night the police recovered the juvenile housemaid after multiple raids in Islamabad and other cities. The child was presented before a new medical board – consisting of professors of general medicine, plastic surgery, psychology as well as the head of Pims’ burns centre.

No new sections added to FIR

Police said no new sections had been added to the FIR against Judge Khan and his wife.

On Friday, the attorney general informed the SC’s division bench, comprising Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar and Justice Maqbool Baqar, that the police were ‘thinking’ of inserting section 328-A (cruelty to a child) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and section 14 of the Employment of Child Act, 1991 in the FIR against the judge and his wife.

However, police sources confirmed on Monday that no new sections had been added to the FIR yet.

Issue taken up in Senate

Senate Chairman Raza Rabbni on Monday said it would be inappropriate to attach Tayyba’s case only with the judiciary as such cases had been appearing in different sections of society every day.

“We all are the perpetrators of crimes against our children and being the custodian of this house, I feel ashamed about it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Islamabad Bar Association (IBA) has announced a full day strike today, Tuesday, against ‘illegal’ detention by police of a lawyer representing the ‘tortured’ housemaid’s family.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2017.