5 months of hell for domestic help in Gurgaon: ‘Branded, disrobed and not allowed to leave’

The minor was told she was being beaten up because “she would not finish her work on time”.

“Often, I slept on the floor in the drawing room… without any clothes. She tore the clothes that I had brought along. He disrobed me and hit me with a stick on my private parts. Once, they tried to strangle me and threatened to kill me. I felt helpless and was scared to tell anyone. I had not contacted home for two months as my SIM was not recharged. They kept me confined in the house,” she told officials.

A police official said that the minor told the police that her uncle had brought her to the house of the accused, and in the first month, they did not harass her.

“She said that a few days later, they started slapping and hitting her for minor issues. The minor said that the couple would repeatedly beat her in the morning and later in the evening after coming from work. She also claimed that the accused had not paid her any money and took Rs 1,000 from her that she had brought from home,” said a police official.

Officials of the medical staff treating her said that she ate light food, including bread, khichdi, fruits and rice flakes, and initially had some discomfort in eating due to a cut near her lips. They said her condition is stable now.

Journalist and activist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj said that an acquaintance told her over the phone on Tuesday that they saw a minor who had come to dispose of garbage in the neighbourhood and noticed that she had several cuts and bruise marks on the face along with blood stains on clothes.

“We suspected that her employers could be beating her up. I put out a tweet appealing for help and reached out to some officials, who directed me to an official of the one-stop centre. After this, police were informed and she was rescued in a terrible condition and had several cut and burn marks on her body,” she said.

The security guard of the building at the accused couple’s residence, requesting anonymity, said, “A police team arrived around 1 pm on Tuesday. They said there had been a complaint and went to the fourth floor of the building to the house of the couple. The couple had gone to work at that time. The police then brought the domestic help downstairs and took her with them. I had not seen her for over a month as she mostly stayed in the house. She looked frail and had several cuts on her body.”

The colony’s security guard said that last month, he had seen the minor crying and confiding in another domestic help while she was disposing of the garbage, but he assumed it was a personal matter and did not intervene.

The neighbours of the accused couple Wednesday expressed shock, stating that they only got to know of the matter after a police team came on Tuesday and rescued the minor girl.

A neighbour said, “The allegations are quite shocking. I saw some police officials taking the minor along on Tuesday afternoon and later from news reports, I learnt that the couple had been arrested. We only saw the couple leave for work and then return. We were not aware of any such allegations.”

Another neighbour said, “The couple had moved here towards the end of 2021 and we did not have much communication.”

After the incident was reported, the PR firm Media Mantra, where the accused Kamaljeet Kaur worked, terminated her services.

Udit Sagar Pathak, the founder of the firm, tweeted, “We are against any kind of child exploitation/brutality. If a wrong has been committed we fully support the judicial system to do justice.”