Minor domestic worker held captive in Gurugram | The seamy side of India’s millennium city Premium

“This will help in tracking the workers and ensure their safety,” she says.Exploitation of domestic workers in Gurugram, India, revealed in story of teenage girl held captive for 6 months.

In Gurugram’s upscale, residential Sector 57, just a stone’s throw from the city’s malls and glass-and-steel corporate offices, a teenage girl working as a domestic help was rescued from her employers last week, after six months of captivity. The family of three that held her captive, including a woman and her adult sons in their 30s, had allegedly burnt her with acid, stripped her naked and filmed her, threatened to push her into prostitution, sexually abused her, hit her with hammers, and instigated their dog to bite her. In WhatsApp groups across gated communities in Delhi’s shiny suburb though, none of this was discussed. The ongoing chatter about ‘maids’ making ‘unreasonable’ demands carried on.

Women — many of them girls — are routinely exploited by their well-off employers in the National Capital Region. What changes is the degree of exploitation. This is not the only case this year. In February, a PR professional and an insurance company employee were accused of sexually harassing their help in Gurugram’s New Colony.

“For four months, her employers did not allow us to speak to her, not even over the phone. They threatened to kill me too if I turned up at their place. I was helpless; I had no support,” says the distraught father, a gardener, surrounded by cameras and journalists inside Gurugram’s Civil Hospital in Sector 10. As he recounts the numerous horrors meted out to his daughter, while she recuperated in the building behind him, he also admits to not reporting it to the police.

Reeling under a debt of ₹1.5 lakh borrowed to meet the medical expenses and other needs of the family, the 47-year-old father, a native of Bihar’s Sitamarhi district, had migrated with his family of eight to Gurugram two years ago hoping for a better future. They came along with a few others from the village. But the harsh reality of the metropolitan city soon hit them, and they found it difficult to even feed their six children.

“Despite both of us working, it was getting difficult for us to survive on our meagre incomes. My husband earns ₹100 to ₹150 a day; I make ₹2,000 a month. So, when an acquaintance, Sanjay, who cleans cars in a group housing society, offered to place our daughter in domestic work at a kothi (independent house) in Sector 57, we agreed,” says the mother, recalling the circumstances that forced the couple to send their minor daughter to work.

According to the First Information Report (FIR), it all went well for the first month, but the parents were not allowed to meet or speak to the girl thereafter. She was hired for ₹9,000 a month for round-the-clock domestic work, but her employers paid her only for the first two months. “They never paid us after that. They did not even take my calls most of the time,” says the mother in the police complaint.

When the girl’s family could not find any means to contact their daughter for six months, the mother finally turned to her employer, Smriti Pratap, a resident of The Legends Apartments in Sector 57, and narrated their ordeal. Pratap, along with the woman, reached the house of the girl’s employers and managed to free her. “I was shocked to see the state the girl was in. Her employer told us she had cut her hair as punishment for stealing. Later, the girl told us that she was hungry, and had ‘stolen’ a piece of bread because she was given food only on alternate days,” says Pratap, who the survivor’s family says has helped them in small ways, giving them a fan and bulbs in summer. After the rescue, she bought warm clothes and socks for the girl.