Not the first time Hry IPS, wife brutalised domestic worker

New Delhi: After the Delhi Police registered a zero FIR here against the wife of Haryana IPS officer Rajesh Kalia for allegedly brutalising their Assamese domestic worker and illegally confining her without food, the agency where she worked has told the police that this was not the first case where one of their workers had been treated as bonded labour by the senior police officer and his wife.

The horrific incident came to light when the police were informed of the Assamese domestic worker, aged 22, who was found lying outside the IPS officer's Panchkula residence on February 4 — with critical injuries and clear signs of torture and without any shoes or winter clothing - left in the cold by the cop and his wife, Manisha, who has been named as an accused int he FIR.

The domestic worker lived in South Delhi's Fatehpur Beri area and is from Assam's Mangaldoi area. Currently, she is being treated for her injuries at the Safdarjung hospital here. After she was found by a constable in a "terrible condition", she was taken to a nearby temple where she was clothed and given shoes. Her father was contacted from there as she could not even speak.

The police here said that the case was registered after the domestic worker's Gurugram-based agency was consulted. South Delhi DCP Benita Mary Jaiker confirmed that the Zero FIR had been sent to the Panchkula police on February 9 even as local police claimed they are "yet to receive the complaint".

In her complaint, the 22-year-old said that she was tortured because she purportedly could not meet the cop and his wife's work expectations. She said that she was tied down with ropes for seven days, and denied meals in addition to being beaten up brutally with wooden sticks regularly.

She added that her employers threw water on her face and made her sleep on the cold marble in the middle of the winter and would just be given loaves of bread thrown on the floor, according to the FIR accessed by Millennium Post.

The police spoke to the Gurugram-based agency and found that in April last year, another of their workers was similarly brutalised and mistreated by the same employers. She was around 21 years old and belonged to Assam's Baksa region. The police found that after enduring the torture for 15 days, she had managed to escape from their house. The police found that the IPS officer, an SP-rank officer, and his wife allegedly chopped off both the domestic workers' hair and also beat them with wooden sticks in addition to slapping them and kicking them in the abdomen. They added that Manisha would beat them up more often.

Police said that the Assamese girl has been working as a domestic worker since dropping out of Class X due to her family's poor financial situation. Her mother works at a day-care centre for babies and her father is a security guard in the Fatehpur Beri area.

The family said that their daughter was being treated well for the first 15-20 days but they would always be very strict about making calls. After around 20 days, the family came to know that her employers took away her two mobile phones - one smartphone and another spare phone that had been sent as backup.

The victim's mother also claimed that the daughter's belongings, documents, clothes and money were also taken away by the officer and his wife and that she was not paid. In October last year, the family had asked the officer to send her home for a few days but they refused to do so, after which they stopped answering calls.