Gurugram: A black green blanket covers her, but she shivers nevertheless, not least because of the December Delhi weather. Every now and then, she whimpers in her sleep.
It’s only when she wakes up and lets go of the blanket for a glass of water that the extent of her injuries begins to show.
There are burn marks on her knuckles, allegedly made from acid. Her face and neck bear bruises and scratch marks. On her legs are bite marks, allegedly made by a dog.
Torture doesn’t come close to describing what this 13-year-old from Bihar’s Sitamarhi suffered over the past five months. For nearly half-a-year, she was allegedly held captive by a family of three in Gurugram’s Sector 57 who brought her in as a domestic worker — which is itself a crime, given her age.
Through the entire time, her “employers” — a widow named Shashi Sharma, 55, and her sons aged 25 and 30 — allegedly deprived her of food for days, and tied and gagged her.
According to the girl, ṣhe was stripped naked, sexually assaulted, filmed and blackmailed. The accused also allegedly poured acid on her hands, and let their pet dog loose on her.
The child, currently hospitalised, was finally rescued by her mother and her employer last week, after repeated attempts to make contact with her were allegedly scuttled by the accused.
The Gurugram case is one of at least eight incidents of abuse of domestic workers that have emerged in Delhi-NCR over the last one year.
While the woman and her sons have not been arrested so far, they have been booked under the Protection Of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, along with IPC sections 289 (negligent conduct with respect to animal), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 344 (wrongful confinement for ten or more days), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 509 (outraging modesty of a woman).
The sons, said to be employees of private firms, have not been named in the FIR, registered at Gurugram’s Sector 51 women police station.
Speaking to ThePrint, Gurugram Police Public Relations Officer Subhash Boken said they were still investigating the case. “We are verifying all allegations and claims,” Boken said.
Asked why no arrests had been made, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Virender Vij (under whom the Sector 51 women police station falls) said they were waiting for the girl’s medical reports.
“We also need to determine her age. If there is no age proof, then an ossification (determining age through a study of bones) test is conducted to determine the age,” he added.
As the wheels of justice move forward, the girl’s broken family is trying to come to terms with the ordeal their daughter has suffered. Putting their daughter to work at this age, they say, was never a happy choice.
“What will the poor do?” her father told ThePrint. “No one sends their children to work happily.”
Also Read: Rs 2.5 lakh ‘settlement’, but nightmares persist — how ‘tortured’ Assam worker ‘moved on’
‘Burnt, starved, gagged’
The girl came to Delhi-NCR with her mother and five siblings around two years ago. Their father, 42, had been working in Gurugram for 10 years, selling plants on a cart, but was increasingly finding it hard to support his family of eight.
While Indian law prohibits even domestic labour under the ages of 14, the plan was for more members of the family to get a job.
“I have six children. She is the second — the eldest daughter. None of the children could go to school,” said the father.
The family told ThePrint that they came to know about the Sharmas’ search for a full-time domestic worker through a contact in the area.
“We sent her off to stay and work at the house after another person, who works in the area, informed us that a family is looking for a domestic worker,” said her father.
“They told us that they will pay Rs 9,000 per month. We thought sending her off to work would be a good decision — she would have enough to eat and live a better life, but this is what they did to her,” he added, pointing to the bruises on her hands.
Even the promised pay didn’t materialise, with the girl’s parents saying the salary was only sent for two months. Efforts to talk to her were blocked just a month into the job, they added.
“They refused to let us meet or talk to her. When we would visit, they would yell at us and threaten us,” the father said.
“When we called, they would make some excuse or the other and not let us talk to her,” he added, saying that one conversation with their daughter was allowed some two months ago.
The family hit their limit when they visited the Sharmas’ house to bring their daughter home for Chhath Puja in November, but were not allowed to meet her.
“My wife then started complaining about it to Samriti madam (the mother’s employer, Samriti Pratap). They both went to the house and got our daughter out of there,” the father said.
When she was back home, she told her family what all she had suffered.
“They used to tie her up for days and beat her up. She was given only one meal a day and, on some days, they would just not give her anything to eat,” the father said. “The men would touch her and then threaten her that if she tells us about it, they will kill us.”
In her complaint to police, on which the FIR is based, the mother said her “daughter told us that the woman would gag her and beat her”.
“They held her captive for five months. Her two sons would torture my daughter… they would strip her naked and touch her inappropriately and make videos,” she added, according to the complaint in the FIR, a copy of which is with ThePrint.
“They threatened her that if she told me or anyone, they would force her into prostitution and kill us. They made their dog bite her several times, threw acid on her hands and hit her with rods and hammers.”
Pratap, who helped the family rescue the child, said Shashi Sharma didn’t want to let them enter the house when they arrived last Friday, and they had to “barge in to get the minor out”.
“There are no words to describe how she (the 13-year-old) looked. She sat there, looking pale, like she had seen a ghost,” the home-maker told ThePrint. “When we got her out, she couldn’t stand… Hands, feet, face, head — there were injuries everywhere.”
The scars haunt the child’s parents too, and they are reeling under the consequences of their decision to make her work.
“We had no option,” said the father. “We couldn’t feed all the children.”
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
Also Read: ‘Beaten up, bound for days, tortured’ — Assam worker accuses Haryana IPS, wife of bonded labour