New Delhi: An eight-year journey of bonded labour finally came to an end for a minor girl from Delhi, who was rescued and restored to her parents by the Child Welfare Committee on Thursday.
The girl, a resident of Johri Farm in Delhi's Jamia Nagar, worked as a domestic worker and was made to babysit the four-year-old son of the employer at their house in south Delhi’s Shahin Bagh area.
The Defence Colony sub-divisional magistrate issued a release certificate to the minor girl stating, she should be released from her employers and also ordered compensation of Rs 20,000.
The SDM also directed the Jamia Nagar SHO to initiate legal action against the employers under relevant sections of Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976.
The rescued girl was taken to a shelter home after the complaint reached Child Welfare Committee (CWC). She told authorities that her mother was lured by the employer with a promise that she would be looked after by them “like their own child and would also be sent to school”.
On speaking to a social activist and national convener Nirmal Gorana, the rescued girl said, “Even though I was just seven years old, my employer began instructing me to do all household chores and used to verbally and physically assault me, whenever she felt I was not doing a good job. I was forcefully confined in the house and was only allowed to visit my parents on holidays for few hours.”
She added that the employers accompanied her, when she used to visit her parents and was not allowed to tell her parents about the physical, mental trauma she was enduring from them.
The rescued girl said that a few months ago, she was severely physically abused by her employer and she finally decided to escape the house. She went to her sister’s house in Delhi and told her that she was being treated as a bonded labourer who then informed her parents, as they were unaware of their daughter’s exploitation by her employer.
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