Child maid case: Medical board confirms girl was tortured

Doctors say they found 10 to 12 bite marks, scratches, and burns

ISLAMABAD: While a formal report has yet to be released, doctors part of a medical board which examined a girl recovered from a house in Sector E-11/3 has confirmed she bore multiple injury marks ostensibly caused by torture.

A six-member board of doctors at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims), constituted to examine the girl, said on Monday that they had found multiple injury marks on the child’s body.

“The girl had various torture marks on her neck, arms and right leg,” said, medico-legal officer Dr Farrukh Kamal, adding that the board found 10 to 12 bit marks, scratches and burns on her body.

Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University Islamabad Vice Chancellor Dr Javed Akram also confirmed that the board had found marks on the child maid’s body, inflicted at different times, such as bite and thumb marks on her neck and hands.

Golra police had recovered an 11-year-old girl from a house in Sector E-11/3 on Friday evening following a complaint from a neighbour. The child maid told the police that she had been brought to the house from Rahim Yar Khan in June 2016, with the consent of her parents, to work.

Police had subsequently arrested a woman and her son for allegedly subjecting the juvenile housemaid to illegal confinement and torture. However, they were released on Saturday after a magistrate accepted their bail pleas.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 21^st, 2017.