Maid thrashing case: Police report makes sorry reading

Cops find ladle used in beating, accused still claim charitable intent

ISLAMABAD: The police probe into the alleged torture of an underage housemaid points out the violence and abuse metted out to the victim by the wife of a sessions judge, who himself has been accused of employing the minor as a maid.

The police report states that the “investigation was carried out from all angles and revealed that the child* was brutally tortured by Maheen Zafar”.

The police have accused the judge of employing her as a housemaid and failing to provide her with appropriate medical treatment on seeing her “acute” injuries. “He cannot be absolved at this stage,” it reads.

The second interim report submitted before the Supreme Court further revealed that “ocular as well as circumstantial evidence has been collected and placed on record against the woman accused of the crime”.

The victim, the report said, also directed them to the tool used to torture her, which has since been recovered and entered into evidence.

Sessions judge Raja Khurram Ali Khan and his wife Maheen Zafar were booked after the 10-year-old victim accused them of keeping her in wrongful confinement, burning her hand, beating her with a ladle, detaining her in a storeroom, and threatening her with even worse.

The first interim report said “there is evidence that the victim was tortured by the accused”.

The report added that “the victim was employed by Raja Khurram Ali Khan as a housemaid at his residence.”

The statement of Rai Usman Khan Kharal, an MPA from PP-56, revealed that he had no contact with the judge and did not know him. He added that he also had no contact with the parents of the girl.

In his statement before the SC, Azam had revealed that he came to Islamabad after he saw the tortured girl on television, adding that a local landlord – Rai Usman Kharal – had provided a car and driver to bring him, the girl’s mother Nusrat Bibi, her paternal uncle Allah Ditta, and her paternal aunt Pathani to the capital for two days.

Pathani’s statement revealed that Nusrat was operated on two years ago and her brother took a Rs20,000 loan from someone which he could not repay. She said her brother contacted Nadira to get a job for T*.

On August 14, she said, the girl was brought to Islamabad and Nadira paid Rs3,000 per month to her brother as the girl’s salary.

While denying all charges, the judge and his wife claimed conspiracy, adding that they had kept the girl on “humanitarian basis” in view of her parents’ poor financial condition.

He said that she disappeared on December 27 and the matter was reported to police. On December 28, he said, she came home with injuries on her face which, she told him, were from falling down the stairs.

In her statement, Nadira informed the police that her niece Nazia, in her early 20s, was employed as a maid by Khan’s sister-in law Sehrish. Nadira said that after she left her job, Sehrish called to tell her that “she was looking for a child maid” and would pay Rs3,000 per month.

*Name withheld to protect identity

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2017.