How a ‘job’ to help her family out of poverty turned into a nightmare for Gurgaon teenager

After a few weeks, things took an uglier turn when the woman’s two sons, both in their thirties, started “touching her body inappropriately”. One day, she said, the woman stripped her while the men filmed the act. “This happened in November. The two sons touched and when I tried to stop them, they beat me up,” she said. Detailing the atrocities allegedly committed by Shashi, the girl said, “Once she took a hammer and tried to hit me below (in the genitals). I bit her hand and she beat me up, tied me to a chair and taped my mouth.”

‘The employer never left the house’

The girl said the woman was always at home. “She never left the house, always watched me and even installed cameras at all the spots where I used to sit,” she added.

There was no way the teenager could ask for help, she said. “She installed a grille in the stairs leading to our floor and always kept it locked. I didn’t get the chance to tell anyone because she was always there, even when delivery people came to the house,” she added. “The woman set up a door lock with a password and no one could go out or come in easily,” she said.

The girl alleged that the family used to starve her for food.

They gave me food at 12 am and a day later at 12 pm,” she recalled. “I used to have long hair, but they cut it and pulled it out. Even when I would bleed from all the injuries, they would not do anything… Once they hurled abuses at me and said they would make me dance in front of everyone,” the girl, whose face bore scars, her neck knife marks, and both hands burn marks, said. “When she (the employer) would go to sleep, she tied me up so I wouldn’t try to escape,” the girl said.

They had a dog at home, she said, and the woman would coax it into biting her. “It was a small dog, but the woman would make it attack me,” the teenager said.

The attacks continued even as the girl carried on with her daily chores. “A month ago, she poured acid on my hands when I was mopping the floor,” she said.

“I knew my aunt’s number, but there was no way I could call anyone. My father was threatened whenever he came to visit me…” she told The Indian Express.

‘Could never imagine what my daughter was going through’

The teenager had come to Gurgaon a year-and-a-half ago and had been helping her mother at her employers’ houses until an acquaintance arranged the “job” for her. Her father thought it would improve the family’s circumstances.

“I don’t earn anything substantial and my wife’s income was also not enough to feed the family of eight (including the girl’s five siblings)…” shared the father, a gardener.

“The first two months, her salary was given. Then, it stopped. I had gone there to see her a few times but the woman did not let me in and threatened me. When my wife went to her former employer for help, we did not imagine this was what my daughter was going through,” he said.

The house, situated in sector 57, had cameras installed on the fourth floor where the woman’s family lived. The basement, which she owned, also had cameras, which were installed 15 days ago, said a neighbour. “She (the woman) would pick fights with everyone in the building. Last month, she fought with someone over parking their car. She was of a very controlling nature, but no one knew she had employed a minor at her home. I have seen the child only once, when the fight broke out and she had come down with the woman. But I thought she was the woman’s relative,” said the neighbour. He said Shashi’s two sons claimed that they were working for a contractor in road projects.

The man who sold the flat to the woman said the family bought the property 1.5 years ago.