Bihari servants go into hiding

MUMBAI, June 23: Mein taqleef mein hoon. Aap apna kam keejiye I am in trouble. Please continue with your work,'' is all Damodar Adhav sa...

MUMBAI, June 23: 8220;Mein taqleef mein hoon. Aap apna kam keejiye I am in trouble. Please continue with your work,8221; is all Damodar Adhav said before he hung up on his employer Sunder Bhatia. It was June 15 and he has not come back since. Damodar8217;s 13-year-old brother, Amrit, has been arrested for the murder of Uma Seth, a housewife, at Usha Kiran building on June 13. Though Damodar is innocent, he is one of the several Bihari servants who have gone into hiding fearing a police crackdown.

Sunder Bhatia8217;s wife said: 8220;Damodar worked in our house on June 13 the day Uma Seth was killed. On June 15, he came to work at 8 am and started cooking. At 9 am he suddenly left the house and called us 15 minutes later to say he won8217;t be coming back!8221;

The main accused in the murder, Chotu Yadav, and his brother Baleshwar too are missing. Baleshwar alias Vijay was employed with Mehtas at Malabar Hill. Bharat Mehta said he worked with the family for just four days. 8220;He had worked with us for a month four yearsago, so we hired him again sometime in mid-June. One day, he told us his father had expired and left,8221; Mehta said.

Another Bihari servant Chotu Yadav not the accused, who worked with the Mehras at Usha Kiran, has also been missing. Said Inspector Suresh Deshpande of Gamdevi police station, Chotu Yadav had tipped off the accused about the vacancy in the Seth household. Deshpande says Baleshwar, Damodar, Chotu and a few other Biharis hail from the same village 8211; Guraha 8211; to which the killers belong. 8220;They are thus afraid they will be detained for interrogation,8221; D C Wilson, senior inspector at the Gamdevi police station, added. Interestingly, about 40 young boys from this village work as domestic help in Mumbai. Using information provided by Shivprakash Seth, deceased Uma Seth8217;s husband, and police informers, the Gamdevi police had despatched a team to Guraha village in Kodarma formerly Hazaribaug district of Bihar.

Though Amrit was picked up from his house, see box, the other boys were not there.Over 40 young Bihari boys are employed as domestic servants in Malabar Hill and Pedder Road alone. Police said they have interrogated most of them and given those with no record a clean chit. Since the grisly murder of June 13, residents are afraid of hiring servants. While some of them would rather do their own housework, others insist on recommendations from former employers. In the past one week, over 20 residents have picked up Servant Identification8217; forms from the Gamdevi police. To be filled out by a servant before he is hired, this form contains personal details like his full name and address, photograph, thumb impression and references.