Death of abused maid raises concerns on domestic servitude

also works as a housemaid in the city, called a helpline asking for help on 19 December. Swati Maliwal, head of the Delhi Commission for Women, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation: “When I reached the hospital, what I saw was horrifying. “She looked starved and could barely move. In her statement to the police she said that she had been beaten with iron rods by her employer for complaining about excess work.” There are an estimated 50 million domestic workers in India, most of them women, who are regularly exploited in the absence of any legal protection with a nationwide policy to support domestic workers awaiting cabinet approval, activists say.

Traffickers zero in on poor villages in states such as West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, convincing vulnerable families to send their daughters away for employment. But the children and young women are often passed onto unregulated placement agencies and transported in groups to cities where a growing middle class is looking for cheap live-in labour.

Rishi Kant of anti-trafficking charity Shakti Vahini, which is assisting the victim’s family, said her mother didn’t know where her daughter was and kept calling the agency asking them to send her back. “They kept promising they would and now the girl has died,” said Kant. “Every day there are cases coming to light and yet people in the capital city are silent.”