12-yr-old domestic help escapes after years of torture

In the wee hours of Wednesday a 12-year-old domestic help managed to escape from her employers’ residence in East Delhi. Revealing her ordeal to Gurgaon Police, the girl said that she was kidnapped from Jharkharnd five years back and was pushed into the trade of human trafficking and was sold to a domestic workers’ agency where she was physically tortured and sexually abused.

According to the information received from the Gurgaon Police and the Child Welfare Committee, the girl was initially trafficked from Liyagi village, district Mundu in Jharkhand. The minor with four other girls was first kept in a nearby isolated village for a week and then later trafficked to various cities. Out of these five girls, one was trafficked to Ranchi and the other four were brought to New Delhi.

The trafficking took place in 2010 and since then these girls were physically abused, gang raped and mentally tortured. The minor with the other four girls was brought to a domestic workers’ agency office in Anand Vihar area of East Delhi. The minor was physically abused, sexually harassed and mentally tortured by the employees at the agency on the orders of the owner of the agency, identified as a lady named Meena. 

The victim in her complaint had mentioned that the girls were sent to various houses as domestic workers where they were kept on a contract for 11 months. She also revealed that though the girls were not abused or sexually harassed in the houses but they were not paid for their services as the owner of the agency used to keep all the money with her. 

As and when the minors used to come back to the agency on holidays or after their contracts, the owner of the agency used to leave four to five men in the room to exploit them. 

“This incidence of sexually harassing and abusing the child happened for five long years and the minor was found with major biting marks on her body”, said Shakuntla Dhull, the Director of the Child Welfare Committee, Gurgaon. 

The CWC has written directives to the DCP crime, New Delhi, DCP Ranchi and Jharkhand police to trace the family of the minor and also trace the trafficker who first brought them to Delhi.

An FIR has been registered in the Bhondsi police station under Sections 370, 371 and 6 of POCSO Act. The girl has been shifted to a shelter home in Gurgaon and will be counselled regularly.