17-year-old girl’s employer, a TRS leader, is arrested amid charge of police cover-up
Our Correspondent
HYDERABAD — A fact-finding team, which visited Himayathnagar village in Moinabad Mandal in Rangareddy district, a suburb of Hyderabad, where a poor Muslim maid had allegedly ended her life after her employer sexually assaulted her last week, has ruled out suicide and concluded that the 17-year-old girl was repeatedly raped by the man, a rowdy-sheeter.
The body of Hayath Begum (name changed) was found hanging from a ceiling fan in the employer’s bedroom in the morning on September 25.
The four-member team from Hyderabad, 30 km away, also found that Madhu Yadav, who used to get drunk, verbally abuse her and her younger sister Afreen, and almost every night took Hayath to one of the spare bedrooms on the upper floor, had threatened the victim’s younger sister Afreen that he would kill her family if she revealed anything to anyone.
For the past five years, the two sisters had been working as resident domestic servants at the house of Madhu Yadav, a real estate dealer and a local leader of state’s ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS).
Their father, Ibrahim Qureshi, had remarried after the death of his first wife and sent away his three children–the two daughters and a son–from first wife to work and took their earnings from their employers.
Afreen told the team: “On 24th September night, Hayath was crying but did not tell me the reason. After supper, when they went to bed, Yadav came and started abusing us. And then, he asked Hayath to come upstairs. I also went along with her sister to the room upstairs but Yadav sent her away saying ‘I have work with your sister; you go down and sleep’”. The next morning, she found her sister hanging from the ceiling fan.
According to the team’s findings, the incident of the mysterious death was not reported to the Sarpanch or other people till the police took away the dead body. Also, Yadav, who stayed in the Moinabad house with his wife, two sons and his parents, had tutored Afreen to tell investigators that Hayath took the extreme step because she was unable to bear her stomach pain.
Locals told the team that they were angry not only with Yadav but also with the girls’ father for sending them for work in the house of a man who has criminal cases against him.
The police did not do a panchnama (a record of witness testimony) and have termed the death as suicide. In order to escape the crime of employing minor children, Yadav even made corrections in the Aadhar cards of the girls.
The team found out that neither the Sarpanch nor any person from the village was involved in the Panchnama which is against the norms. What’s more, the girls’ father, who lives with his second wife in a room constructed on an open plot, was unaware of the sexual and verbal abuses faced by his two daughters as they never shared anything and came to meet him only once in a year during festival time.
The team does not believe it to be a suicide case as its findings showed that the feet of the girl were touching the bed on which she had climbed to hang herself, which usually are in mid-air in cases of death by hanging. Also, the bucket which she supposedly used to climb to reach the fan was standing intact and had not rolled off as happens in cases of hanging. Again, Hayath’s right hand was swollen and her left hand was closed in a fist, indicating that she was hurt on the hand.
The police have arrested Yadav and charged him under Section 354 and 306 of IPC (disrobing with the intention of outraging the modesty of a woman and abetment to suicide) in the FIR. They have also booked Yadav under Section 75 and 79 of Juvenile Justice Act for employing a minor.
“Why would she commit suicide when this sexual abuse had become a routine? Why did she go upstairs to the bedroom to commit suicide? Why did Yadav ask Afreen to lie about the suicide if he had nothing to do with it?” asks the fact-finding team comprising Khalida Parveen, Nikhat Fatima and Aasiya Nusrat from Hyderabad Women’s Forum, and Md Kaleem from Movement for Peace and Justice.
The girl’s father has demanded justice for his daughter but only the forensic reports after the post mortem can confirm whether it was suicide or murder.
