Maid slashed with knives,mauled by dogs

NEW DELHI (AFP) – A teenage girl working as a
maid in India's capital was recovering in hospital Tuesday after being rescued from a home where campaigners said she was slashed with knives and mauled by dogs.
Police told AFP they had arrested her employer, a 50-year-old woman who lives with her 85-year-
old mother in the upmarket Vasant Kunj area of
southern New Delhi, on suspicion of illegal
confinement and assault.
The 15-year-old's injuries have cast a spotlight
again on the abuse of domestic servants in the
capital where thousands of workers, often
children trafficked from remote and poverty-
stricken states, toil for long hours in homes with
almost no legal protection.
"It is horrible and barbaric," Kiran Walia, Delhi's
minister for women and child development, told
reporters after visiting the victim in a city
hospital where she is being treated for multiple
injuries.
The girl, from the eastern state of Jharkhand,
reportedly told police after her rescue on
Monday night that she had been working with
her employers for the past year and was unable
to leave.
"Such a heinous crime has happened to this girl.
The whole head was smashed, the whole body,
dog bites are there," Rishi Kant, from the anti-
trafficking campaign group Shakti Vahini, told
the NDTV news channel, adding she had also been
slashed with knives.
"In this house they are well off, they are not poor
people," he added after a joint operation with
police to rescue the maid.
A crowd of onlookers gathered outside the four-
storey residential block on Tuesday as news of
the rescue operation spread, with locals saying
the two women were known as unpredictable
and frequently involved in neighbourhood
disputes.
"I heard shrieks yesterday while I was walking in
the park. Then my maid came running to me and
said 'There is something wrong in that house,
come with me'," said Achla Bhandari, a resident
in the middle-class neighbourhood.
"We both rushed there and tried to peek through
the windows," she added. "I was horrified when I
saw her."
She and other neighbours said the two women
kept five dogs and often had street dogs roam
inside their home.
Neeraj Kumar Yadav, a Vasant Kunj police
inspector, told AFP the 45-year-old employer was
in policy custody. Charges would not be pressed
against her elderly mother on account of her age,
he said.
In April last year police arrested a wealthy doctor
couple who locked up their 13-year-old maid
while they went away on holiday. She was
rescued by firefighters when neighbours spotted
her crying on an outside balcony.
"Rich people are willing to pay any amount of
money to get servants who can clean their
houses, survive on left-over food," campaigner
Kant told AFP recently.
"Illegal placement agencies offering housemaids
have mushroomed in every city across India."
"The rich employers are specifically looking at
children because they come cheaper, complain
less and can be exploited."
In 2006 India passed legislation banning
employment of children under 14 in households,
roadside eateries and hotels, but the law is
widely flouted in the country of 1.2 billion
people.

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