House maid tortured, detained by employers

Police recover victim from house after receiving call from neighbour

LAHORE:

Yet another incident of torture on child domestic help has been reported in Wahdat Colony at the house of a public servant on Thursday.

Reportedly, a neighbour informed the police that a child domestic labourer was screaming and crying loudly for help while being tortured inside a house. A police team responded to the call and jumped into the house using a ladder as the main door of the house was locked.

They found the victim all alone inside the house.

She told police that her name was Saba, a resident of Kasur. She had been working in this house for over one and a half years. Her employers would subject her to severe torture.

She added that her younger sister was also employed in the same house and was also brutally tortured by the employers.

“My father is in jail. He had borrowed Rs35,000 from my employer. In return, my father had sent me to work at this house,” she said.

She said her employer had got signatures of her father on a paper and hurled threats of dire consequences if he took back her daughter, she said.

The victim had torture marks on her body.

An FIR has been registered against the suspect Tariq and his wife. The victim Saba has been handed over in the custody of the Child Protection and Welfare Bureau (CP&WB).

Police said that a medical examination has been conducted and they were investigating the matter further.

Violence on child domestic help is quite rampant in society. Every other day a tragic story is being reported.

A few days back, a stepmother had brutally tortured a four-year-old girl in Imamia Colony Shahdara.

In the first week of March, a case of torture of a minor domestic help had surfaced in Faisalabad. In December last year, a minor domestic worker died reportedly due to brutal torture and alleged rape by her employees in Iqbal Town.

A few days before the Iqbal Town incident, a maid was brutally tortured reportedly for breaking a pot in Faisalabad. The tragic incident was captured on CCTV footage. The video had gone viral on social media.

Last year in January, a minor maid was allegedly tortured and killed by her employer in Chung. Initial examination report revealed that the girl had suffered injuries on different parts of her body including her face and head.

The father of the deceased filed a complaint against the employers Dr Humera and her husband Junaid for allegedly torturing his daughter to death.

The 15-year-old maid, Sana, was a resident of Hajra Shah Muqim Depalpur and worked in Pak View Villas Z Block.

In June 2020, three women were booked for subjecting a maid to brutal torture in Rahim Yar Khan. A few days earlier of this incident, a case was reported in Rawalpindi.

In January 2018, a domestic worker named Uzma was killed by her employer Mahrukh. The assailant had thrown the 13-year-old’s body in a drain after torturing her fatally. Police later arrested the accused and recovered the maid’s body from the drain.

In another incident on September 15, 2018, a domestic worker named Khalida was found dead in a servant quarter inside a house in the Defense B area. In 2017, the daughter of an MPA was booked for allegedly torturing to death a teenage boy in the Akbari Gate area.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2021.