A 16-year-old girl who was allegedly forced to work for nearly 20 hours a day, burnt repeatedly with a hot iron and denied food for days was rescued from a house in southeast Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, police said on Saturday. The girl had been employed as a domestic help and kept away from her parents for nearly a year before a child rights organisation alerted the authorities and a joint rescue operation was carried out.
The girl was working at a house in Abul Fazal Enclave-II, a residential locality in Shaheen Bagh, where she was allegedly employed by a woman identified as Sadaf. According to the police, the matter came to light after the Association for Voluntary Action, a non-governmental organisation working on child protection, approached the authorities with a complaint alleging that a minor girl was being employed as a labourer in the Kalkaji sub-division.
Acting on the complaint, the sub-divisional magistrate of Kalkaji directed a rescue operation, which was conducted by the Labour Department, the Delhi Police and representatives of the organisation on November 3 and 4.
During the operation, the girl was rescued from the house in Abul Fazal Enclave-II. She is a resident of Shram Vihar Jhuggi, a settlement in Shaheen Bagh itself, but had been kept away from her parents for almost a year. Her statement was recorded before a magistrate, and she was produced before the Child Welfare Committee, which directed that she be admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for treatment.
In her statement, the girl said she was made to work from 6 in the morning until 2 at night, performing household chores such as sweeping, mopping, washing utensils and cleaning the house. She said she was given tea at around 11 in the morning and was often served leftover food. She also told the authorities that she was once denied food and water for three consecutive days and was beaten over minor mistakes.
She alleged that her employer repeatedly burnt her with a hot iron on her back, hands and hips and wounded her with a heated knife. The injuries, the long hours and the denial of food together paint a picture of sustained cruelty over many months, according to officials involved in the rescue. The girl was examined by doctors after her rescue, and the Child Welfare Committee's direction that she be admitted to AIIMS underlines the seriousness of her condition.
The organisation that raised the alarm said the girl had been placed in the household through another woman and had been paid only 18,000 rupees for nearly a year of work. That detail has become a central part of the case, pointing to a chain in which children from poor families are placed as domestic workers in city homes, often with little oversight and no protection.
Following the rescue, the sub-divisional magistrate ordered the Shaheen Bagh police station to register a case under the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015. The employer, Sadaf, has been arrested and sent to judicial custody, according to the police.
The case will now proceed through the courts, with the girl's statement before the magistrate forming a key part of the evidence.
The rescue has once again drawn attention to the persistence of child domestic labour in the capital despite laws that prohibit it. Employing children below the age of 14 in any occupation is banned under Indian law, and the employment of adolescents between 14 and 18 in hazardous occupations is also prohibited. Domestic work, with its long hours, isolation inside private homes and absence of any inspection, remains one of the hardest forms of child labour to detect.
Cases usually come to light only when a neighbour, a relative or an organisation notices something wrong and complains.
Child rights workers say the Shaheen Bagh case follows a familiar pattern. A child from a poor household is sent to work in a city home, often through an intermediary who takes a cut of the wages. The child lives in the employer's house, works from early morning until late at night, and has little or no contact with her family.
Because the abuse takes place inside a private home, it can continue for months or years before anyone outside knows. In this case, the girl was kept away from her parents for nearly a year, and it was only the intervention of an outside organisation that ended her ordeal.
The role of the Child Welfare Committee is significant in such cases. Once a rescued child is produced before the committee, it decides on her immediate care, including medical treatment, shelter and counselling, and it can order that the child be restored to her family. In this case, the committee moved quickly to direct hospital admission, which suggests the girl's injuries and her general health needed urgent attention.
Officials said the investigation would also look into how the girl came to be placed in the household and who else was involved in arranging the employment. The woman who placed her there, and the payment of just 18,000 rupees for a year of work, are part of the inquiry. If others are found to have facilitated the employment of a minor, they too could face action under the child labour and juvenile justice laws.
The case has been registered at a time when Delhi's child protection machinery has been under scrutiny for its response to complaints of abuse in domestic settings.
The rescue operation itself, involving the Labour Department, the police and an NGO, working on the directions of a magistrate, is an example of how the system is supposed to work: a complaint triggers a coordinated response, the child is removed from harm, medical care is arranged, and a criminal case is filed against the employer.
For the girl, the immediate future is about recovery. She told the Child Welfare Committee that she wants to resume her studies and become a teacher. That statement, recorded by the authorities after her rescue, has been widely reported and has given the case a human dimension beyond the charges and the legal provisions. It suggests a child who, despite a year of abuse, is thinking about education and a future outside domestic work.
Her wish also underlines what is at stake in cases of child labour. A year spent working 20 hours a day in a stranger's house is a year lost from school, from childhood and from the chance to learn. The law recognises this by making the employment of children a criminal offence, but enforcement depends on detection, and detection depends on people willing to report what they see.
The Delhi Police said the investigation was continuing and that further action would follow based on the evidence collected. The employer remains in judicial custody. The girl continues to receive medical treatment at AIIMS, and the Child Welfare Committee will decide on her rehabilitation and her return to her family.
The case is a reminder that behind the closed doors of ordinary residential colonies, children can be subjected to treatment that would shock the neighbourhood if it were visible. It is also a reminder of the value of organisations that watch for such cases and of the legal framework that allows a magistrate, a labour department and the police to act together when a complaint is made. The girl's rescue ended nearly a year of suffering.
Whether the case leads to a conviction, and whether it prompts closer attention to other children working in similar conditions, will be watched by child rights workers across the city.
(Reporting based on The Indian Express, The Tribune, The Times of India and PTI.)