The victim, who was rescued from Vasant Kunj, says she was forced to sign documents
Seven months after Phul Murmu (name changed), who used
to work as a domestic help at Vasant Kunj, was rescued with signs of
torture and physical abuse, she has complaint to the police of being
pressured to sign documents against her will by two men. She made the
complaint to the district police at Sahibganj in Jharkhand on Friday,
where her family lives.
“On Thursday, two men came to
my house at Atgama village. I had left with my mother to help in her
work, lifting sand. They forced my sister to bring them to the river bed
where we were working and asked me to sign documents, which I could not
read. When I refused, they offered me money and then threatened me.
They forced me to sign them,” Phul Murmu told
The Hindu
over the phone from Sahibganj, where she has been living in a hostel run
by NGO Mahila Samakhya. “The girl made a complaint of being forced to
sign documents by two men. We are investigating the matter,” said
Sahibganj’s Superintendent of Police A.B. Ram.
NGO
Shakti Vahini wrote a letter to Jharkhand’s Director General of Police
and the Chief Secretary asking them to take cognisance of the matter.
“There have been instances of victims being pressured and coerced to
change their statements, and this could be one of them. This must be
checked and investigated thoroughly,” said Rishi Kant, activist with
Shakti Vahini in Delhi.
Phul Murmu, a minor at the
time of her rescue in September 2013, bore injury marks all over her
face. Vandana Dheer, her employer, was then working as the head of
corporate communications with French multinational Alstom.
Murmu
had stated that during the four months she worked at Dheer’s house in
posh Vasant Kunj, she had hit her with hot utensils, used a knife to
peel her skin, and made her drink urine twice to punish her. Dheer was
arrested in October under Sections 326 (voluntarily causing grievous
hurt by dangerous weapons), 342 (wrongful confinement) of the Indian
Penal Code, and the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, and got
bail two months later.
Dorothy, accused of running a
placement agency that trafficked Phul Murmu from Jharkhand, got bail in
October 2013. There has been a spate of incidents over the last year of
domestic workers fleeing or being rescued from Delhi’s residential
colonies and placements agencies after they being beaten, and in several
instances sexually assaulted. Murmu’s rescue by the Delhi Police and
Shakti Vahini was soon followed by a case in November in which Dhananjay
Singh, the then Bahujan Samajwadi Party sitting MP from Jaunpur, U.P.,
and his wife Jagriti Singh were arrested in connection with the death of
Rakhi Bhadra, a 35-year old domestic worker, in their house.
These
cases have, however, not deterred abuse of domestic workers. On April
27, a tribal girl in her late teens from Singhbhum in Jharkhand working
as a domestic worker in Model Town was found dead with injuries.
Her employer businessman Sachin Jindal and his wife Shilpi Jindal were arrested in connection with the death.
.thehindu.com
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