Do you employ a minor help? Get ready to face arrest

Delhiites, who employ minors as domestic helps, may expect to hear from the police soon.

Delhiites, who employ minors as domestic helps, may expect to hear from the police soon.

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In what is being viewed as one of the biggest crackdowns on residents who have employed minors at their houses, Delhi Police have identified 45 such households across the city where minors are working. The employers will be arrested. According to the Delhi government officials, the raids come following an extensive research carried out by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), Dilshad Garden, to identify houses where children are working as helps. It has now asked the Delhi police’s crime branch to conduct raids at such houses and rescue the minors.

Some of the areas where raids would be conducted are Pitampura, Rohini, Janakpuri, Vikaspuri, Ashok Vihar, Dwarka, Kotla Mubarakpur, Vivek Vihar and Karol Bagh.

According to sources, the list of these houses was obtained from a placement agency owner, who was arrested in February this year after a minor girl was rescued from east Delhi.

"In most of the cases, the investigating agencies arrest only those who are involved in trafficking the child. A lot of ground work had to be done to find out the details of houses. We pressured the placement agency owner to provide us the list of the houses where he had supplied minors as domestic helps," said Ajay K Singh, chairperson of the Dilshad Garden CWC.

Sources added that in February a 14-year-old girl was rescued from an east Delhi house and on the information revealed by her, the police had arrested Joseph, a placement agent. "Joseph told the police that he had taken the girl from Chandni placement agency. The police arrested the owners of the agency. The owners gave the police a list of 85 houses where they had sent minors to work as domestic help," a senior police officer said.

With the help of five NGOs, the CWC surveyed these 85 houses. "After two months of hard work, our team found 45 houses where minors are still working as domestic help. The list of these houses was given to the crime branch," said Singh.

Four teams have been constituted by the crime branch to carry out the operation. On Friday, three minors were rescued from separate areas as part of the exercise.

While, the list was given to the crime branch in June itself, it took two months to start the operation. "We planned the operation and are hopeful that we will able to rescue all the minors within a week," said a senior crime branch officer.