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Free: The three rescued maids

Exposing the alleged nexus between human trafficking agents, the police and maid placement agencies, the National Commission of Women (NCW) raided and rescued three household maids from West Delhi.

The raid happened after the NCW received complaints about the mistreatment being meted out to Renuka Kujur (17), a domestic help employed at an East Patel Nagar house. Earlier, senior NCW member Manju S Hembrom had helped Renuka's family with the murder of her sister Rosila (20), who used to work as a domestic help at a jeweller's house in Palwal, Haryana.

Renuka's family in West Bengal called Hembrom up after the girl somehow managed to contact them. 

Without wasting any time, Hembrom raided the flat number 37/14 at East Patel Nagar and rescued Renuka, who was living in a virtual house arrest for the last two months.

Mistreatment

Renuka had been employed in the house through a placement agent Gopi. She told Hembrom that she had repeatedly complained to Gopi about the mistreatment but he never bothered to help her. "I have been kept forcibly as a domestic servant in the house. The agent brought me to the city without the consent of my parents," Renuka complained to Hembrom, even while she was being beaten by her employers in the presence of the NCW member.

Interestingly, when Hembrom was at the police station dealing with Renuka's case, a woman brought in two maids - Neelam Gudiya (13) and Vishwasi Nag (18) - on charges of mobile theft. Later, the mobile was recovered from the owner's house itself. The NCW found that a domestic help agent, Kundal, had sent Gudiya as a replacement for Vishwasi, who was about to go on leave.

Surprisingly, all the three - Renuka, Gudiya and Vishwasi  - were being harassed by their employers and agents and were not paid a single penny in the last one year.

Miscreants go scot-free

Though the police have registered an FIR at the insistence of the NCW, even after three days no arrests have been made and the tainted agents are roaming free. "At first, the police were not ready to believe that I was an NCW member. Though they filed the complaints, they haven't arrested any agent. Nor have they sent the FIR copy and other documents to the NCW," Hembrom told MiD DAY.

The NCW is searching for Chandeli Nag, Vishwashi's sister, who is working somewhere in East Delhi. Vishwasi and Chandeli, both orphans and residents of Khunti district of Jharkhand, had come to Delhi with a dream to earn enough money to build their own house at their ancestral village.

The two sisters could not even meet each other in the last year. Vishwashi, who had been promised a meagre salary of Rs 1,200 per month, hasn't received any money.   "The minor girls were being treated inhumanly by their employers. Neelam was slapped at the police station as well," said Rishi Kant, the executive director of Shakti Vahini, the NGO that had accompanied Hembrom during the raids.

Trafficking pattern
Middlemen woo women and young girls from poor families of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam and Bihar through local agents. According to the Delhi Labour department, around 7,00,000 females from these states have been recruited by placement agencies in Delhi. When the girls get ready to come to the Capital, they are transported to distant railway stations to avoid being spotted.

They are made to alight from the train one or two stations prior to Delhi and are brought into the Capital by road. Even their monthly income, which varies from Rs 1,000 to 5,000 depending on their age and skills in household work, is collected by the agencies. Many of these agents are under the scanner for paying the girls poorly and exploiting them but there is no regulation in place to check them.