Police still clueless about domestic worker's whereabouts

Eleven-year-old Esha’s mother claims the minor was abducted by her employer and possibly killed

LAHORE: Even after the passage of one year, police are clueless about the whereabouts of an 11-year-old domestic worker, Esha, who was allegedly abducted by her employer.

Esha’s family hasn’t met her in over a year and has been demanding their daughter’s release from the accused employers Naseem Bibi and her husband Nauman but to no avail. The girl’s parents claimed that they were expelled from Nauman’s house several times whenever they went to meet their daughter and were warned of dire consequences if they demanded their daughter’s custody. Later, they got an FIR registered against their daughter’s employer when they believed the accused had abducted the child.



Bushra Bibi, Esha’s mother, lodged an FIR on July 28, 2016 against her daughter’s employers for allegedly abducting her, while on the other hand, the employers also lodged an FIR against Esha accusing her of stealing, on July 27, 2016, a day before Bushra registered her FIR against them.



Bushra stated in the FIR that the accused family employed her daughter as domestic helper for Rs4,000 a month. Initially, the accused family did not allow them to meet their daughter and one day they kicked them out of their house when they (Esha’s family) went to see their daughter, she said. Subsequently, she got an FIR registered against the accused family as they believed that they had abducted their daughter for their vested interests.

Meanwhile Nauman, the husband of accused Naseem Bibi, also got an FIR registered against Esha, claiming that Esha had been stealing valuables in their house. “One day she escaped when I probed her after valuables worth Rs35,000 went missing from the house,” he claimed.

After Esha’s family got an FIR registered against the accused party, the accused Naseem and Nauman filed their pre-arrest bails on July 29, 2016, which were heard by three additional district and sessions judges.



In the ongoing case, additional district and sessions judge Chaudhary Ghulam Murtaza has fixed July 28 for arguments on their bails.

During the hearings, Nauman told the court that they had been implicated in a forged case merely to humiliate and blackmail them. A judge while granting them bails summoned the complainant and also asked for the police record.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Bushra said that the police were not cooperating with her, “I have been following the case for over one year now and visiting police station every other day but police haven’t done anything,” she added. She said that they have neither arrested the suspects nor rescued her daughter. “I haven’t seen my daughter for the last one year. It is also difficult for me to visit police station frequently due to financial constraints,” said lamented.

One the other hand Nauman said that the family was involved with a group involved in abduction of minor domestic helpers. “They get the children kidnapped by their own parents and then register abduction FIR to blackmail employers. They had demanded Rs150,000 from me but I did not pay,” he claimed.



Blame game

Bushra said that Nauman allegedly offered a bribe to investigation officer and killed their daughter, but Nauman has refuted the allegation, claiming there were a lot of cases registered in different police stations against Bushra. “One FIR is registered against her in Nawab Town police station. She, along with members of her group, had looted people at gunpoint,” he said.

The investigation officer Muhammad Hussain told The Express Tribune that they haven’t found the whereabouts of the girl as yet. “But, we are not sitting idle and trying our best to rescue the girl,” he said.

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