Mystery shrouds death of maid at Panchkula house
PANCHKULA: A 22-year-old domestic help was found dead in a tub in the backyard of a six-marla house in Sector 16, Panchkula, on Wednesday night.
Suspecting that the deceased, Preeti, a native of Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, was murdered, police have filed a DDR and initiated a probe. There were injury marks on the woman’s neck. Her family is settled in Panchkula’s Budanpur village.
“She had started working at House Number 98 in Sector 16 about a fortnight ago. Earlier, her mother also worked there and the duo used to live in the house itself with the landlady, who is in her 70s,” a police official said.
The elderly woman’s three daughters are married, and she lives alone in the house.
“A neighbour saw the woman, who suffers from various ailments, sitting in her backyard for long even when it was raining. He called her son-in-law, who came at night and took her inside the house. There, the son-in-law found tea boiling in a pan on the gas burner and the maid lying in the tub in the backyard,” the cop said.
The son-in-law sounded the police, who sent the maid to the Panchkula civil hospital in Sector 6, where she was declared dead. An autopsy was conducted and viscera samples were sent to the Haryana Forensic Science Laboratory in Madhuban to establish the cause of death. The report is awaited. The body was handed over to the family after the autopsy, and the cremation was done on Thursday. Police have ruled out the possibility of any sexual assault.