Couple thrashed, held for ‘torturing’ 10-yr-old

A pilot and her husband have been arrested in India for employing a 10-year-old girl as their domestic help and physically assaulting her.

A 33-year-old woman pilot and her 36-year-old husband, both employees of airline companies, were arrested on Wednesday for allegedly employing a 10-year-old girl as their domestic help at their Dwarka home and physically assaulting her, police said.

The girl was employed by a family living on the second floor of a Dwarka Sector-8 house. (Vipin Kumar/HT PHOTO)

The minor, police added, was rescued with several burn marks on her body.

Before the police was informed about the matter, however, the couple was assaulted by a group of people who came to know about the alleged mistreatment of the minor. A video of the couple being beaten, ostensibly on Wednesday morning, by a group of people also surfaced on social media.

The arrested woman was identified as Poornima Bagchi, who works with IndiGo airlines and her husband as Kaushik Bagchi, who is a ground staff with Vistara airlines, according to police.

They were arrested from their rented flat in a four-storey building in Dwarka Sector 8, police said. The two were booked for voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons of means, wrongful confinement, buying or disposing of any person as a slave, and cruelty to child under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 323, 324, 342, 370 and 75, Juvenile Justice Act and Child Labour Act. The case was registered at Dwarka South police station.

“We have arrested the couple. They had illegally employed a child as their house help. Our initial investigation has revealed that they were often subjecting the minor girl to cruelty. The burns looked old and healed. The girl told us she was burnt with an electric iron some 20 days ago. We are verifying the allegation,” said deputy commissioner of police (Dwarka) Harsha Vardhan.

The minor girl’s eyes were also swollen and red, suggesting that she was punched, according to her relatives. She was sent for medical examination and later counselled, police said.

“No allegations of sexual harassment were made. The girl was employed at the couple’s house by her relative living in the neighbourhood,” the DCP added. According to police, she was employed a month ago for only taking care of the couple’s two-year-old child.

Following the incident, IndiGo said it has derostered the woman pilot. “We are currently investigating the matter. Meanwhile, the employee has been derostered from official duties,” an IndiGo spokesperson said in a statement.

“An incidence of violence and abuse has been brought to our notice, allegedly involving a Vistara employee. We will extend complete support to law and enforcement agencies, and, in the meanwhile, we have de-rostered the concerned employee from his duties,” a Vistara spokesperson said.

Police said that a relative of the girl first noticed the victim being beaten up by the accused woman on Wednedsay morning, and raised an alarm.

The relative, who is 15 years old, told HT that she was going for work in the neighbourhood with her mother when they spotted her 10-year-old cousin being assaulted in the balcony of the house by her female employer.

The victim told them that her employer was angry because she had not cleaned the balcony properly.

“My mother asked my cousin to come down. She refused, and said the woman will become angry and beat her again. My cousin looked frightened. At the same time, a paramilitary force staffer who was cleaning his car joined us after seeing my cousin screaming. We confronted the woman and asked her to send my cousin back to us. The woman refused, asked us to speak with my cousin’s parents, took her inside, and locked the balcony door,” the 15-year-old said.

Her mother, the victim’s aunt, said she alerted the police, and also informed some locals about the matter since the victim’s parents had gone to Bihar on July 2 to attend a funeral.

A group of people then went to the flat and asked the couple to bring the girl but the couple refused, she said. Soon, more locals joined them after which the two opened the main door and let the girl out.

“I was shocked after seeing burns at two places on her left arm. The portion around her eyes were swollen and the left eye was red. My niece hugged me and started crying. She looked terrified. Her condition angered many of us. Some people resorted to assaulting the couple,” the victim’s aunt said. “The couple had employed the girl as a caretaker of their 2-year-old son but forced her to do household work,” she alleged.

In a purported video (HT could not independently verify it) of what followed, the person filming the assault on the couple could be heard instigating the crowd and asking an old man, who was trying to save the couple, not to intervene.

In the video clip, some agitated women and girls, including the minor’s relatives, were seen dragging the woman pilot, who was in uniform, by her hair, slapping and punching her, even as she can could heard and seen apologising with folded hands. The pilot’s husband was seen trying to protect his wife from the crowd. However, he was dragged by men from the crowd and assaulted.

Police said that the couple suffered injuries in the assault. A separate FIR was filed against unidentified people in this connection under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 341 (wrongful restraint) of the IPC, said DCP Vardhan.

“We are in the process of identifying the people who were involved in the attack on the couple,” he added.

The couple’s lawyer, Dheeraj Sharma, said that they will examine the allegations once they get a copy of the FIR.

“We will try to find out if it was a premeditated assault on the couple. It is also a matter of investigation that the injuries on the girl’s body were caused by our client or they were already there when she was kept at their house to work,” said Sharma