INDIAN POLICE are preparing to approach Interpol to trace a New Delhi-based couple who locked up a teenage domestic worker in their house last week before leaving for Thailand on holiday.
Police yesterday said “look out” notices would be issued by Interpol against Sanjay and Sumita Verma, both medical doctors with an affluent private practice, in a case that has exposed the plight of minors working as domestic servants.
Authorities said there was no trace of the couple and it was not known whether they were still in the Thai capital Bangkok or, fearing arrest, had fled elsewhere.
On March 29th police rescued the 13-year-old girl after being alerted by neighbours in west Delhi’s affluent Dwarka neighbourhood who heard her crying and screaming for help for hours on end. Her employers, who also own a nursing home, had incarcerated her inside their house with no food while they went on holiday.
The tribal girl from Jharkhand in eastern India spent nearly two days in captivity before being rescued and handed over to the local Child Welfare Committee.
She told welfare workers she had not been paid her salary for more than three months and would get only two chappatis (unleavened flat bread) a day without vegetables or dal (lentils) from her employers.
“If the family went out to eat I would get no food,” she said, adding that she was regularly beaten by the couple and their 11-year-old daughter. “They would hit me with a wooden ruler and pull my hair,” she said.
Police said the girl was brought to Delhi by her uncle a year ago and handed over to a placement agency which, in turn, dispatched her to the Verma household for an unspecified down payment to her guardian. The girl told the welfare committee her torture began from the first day.
“I was scared they would beat me up on their return,” she said.
India banned children under the age of 13 from working as domestic servants, but this veto is practised more in abeyance.
