By Nikhat Fatima, TwoCircles.net
Hyderabad: Being poor is akin to a crime as you are extremely vulnerable to exploitation. This is what happened in the case of Afreen and her elder sister Hayath Begun (name changed), residents of Himayathnagar village, Moinabad Mandal, around 30 kilometres from Hyderabad.
The sisters were kids when their mother died and their father remarried. The step-grandmother who was working as a domestic help at the house of a local leader associated with the ruling party of the state TRS (Telangana Rashtra Samithi) named Bathuku Madhusudhan alais MadhuYadav. When the grandmother could no longer work she arranged for the sisters to work in her stead. The girls were employed to do all the household work 24×7 for meager pay of Rs. 1500 between the two.
However, after 4 years of working in Madhu Yadav’s house, one morning on 25 September, the older girl was found hanging from a ceiling fan and the employer was taken into police custody. The younger girl Afreen told the media and the police that her sister had stomach pain which she could not bear and committed suicide. But after some time, she came out with the truth that she was threatened to tell this story by her employer.
A fact-finding committee comprising 4 social activists from Hyderabad visited the family and found out the truth.
The girls were 11 and 12 years old when they began working in Madhu Yadav’s house. Their brother Salmaan was 16 when he left to work on a poultry farm. All the three children were away from home while their father lived with his second wife and 3 children in a small shed on an open plot which he was guarding.
The girls came home only once a year for the Ramadan festival and that was when they met their brother as well.
When the police warned Madhu Yadav for employing children, he manipulated the Aadhar cards of the girls and changed their age.
“We have not even seen our Aadhar cards. Madhu Yadav kept it with them,” said Afreen recalling the day when their Aadhar cards were made.
On probing further she told the fact-finding committee that this was not the first time that their employer took her sister to his room upstairs. On several occasions, he would be drunk and take the girl upstairs.
The older sister was too scared to talk about the sexual abuse even with her younger sibling. On that particular night, she was crying profusely and did not share the reason with Afreen. And when they went to sleep, Madhu Yadav came and woke them up hurling abuses.
He asked the older girl to come upstairs. This time, Afreen accompanied her but Madhu told her to go downstairs and sleep as he had ‘work’ with her older sister. He latched the door from inside and Afreen came downstairs and went back to sleep.
At 4 am which is the usual time for the sisters to wake up and get to work, she did not find her sister beside her and first approached Yadav’s wife and the duo looked for the girl. Finally, they found her in the room upstairs hanging from a ceiling fan.
“It was Madhu Yadav who called up the police after seeing my sister hanging from a ceiling fan. Then he told me to tell the police that my sister was having severe abdominal pain and went to the washroom twice in the night and then the third time she went she did not wake me up,” shared Afreen.
Afreen was too scared to come out of the house even though many people asked her to. Madhu Yadav had threatened to kill her family if she told the truth or left his house.
“Madhu Yadav told me to stay in his house and not go anywhere. But when the news of my sister’s death reached others, my uncle who lives in Himayathnagar entered the house and pulled me out of the house even though Madhu Yadav was forcing me to stay back. After coming out of his house I gathered the courage to tell the truth and narrated everything to the police,” she said.
When asked why they did not share anything earlier, the verbal abuses, the work overload and the sexual abuse, she simply said, “My father is poor and has lots of problems, so we stayed quiet.”
Though initially the police booked Madhu Yadav for abetment of suicide and compelling a woman to disrobe with the intention of outraging her modesty, have now, due to public outrage and protest booked him under rape and other sections of Juvenile Justice Act for employing a minor.
The fact-finding committee met the police who assured that the Aadhar card will not be taken as evidence of age and they are awaiting the post mortem report which will reveal the age of the girl and other facts whether she was raped and murdered. Her body has been sent to Osmania General Hospital.
As of now, the case has been admitted in the court of the additional metropolitan judge, Rajendranagar, Ranga Reddy district and an appeal has been made to the court to alter the sections from 354, 306 of IPC to 354, 306 and 376 (2) (k) along with the sections of JJ Act under which the accused is charged.
The fact-finding committee asked the police inspector at Moinabad about the panchnama which the local people informed was not done. The inspector denied the claim of the people and said a panchnama was done but it was kept confidential and that only government officials were involved in doing the panchnama which the committee found odd because a local person especially one from the Muslim community, the Sarpanch have to be involved in the process. The Sarpanch was not even informed of the incident. He came to know with all the others after the police took away the dead body of Hayath Begum.
The father of the girls, Ibrahim Qureshi is at the receiving end as the Muslim community especially the youth are angry with him for leaving 2 young girls to work and be sexually abused in a Hindu household. Some youth whom the committee spoke to said, “Ibrahim is awaiting the compensation he will get for his daughter’s death. And after that, he is bound to send the girl to work in someone else’s house.”
The Sarpanch and other villagers are demanding justice and expressed sorrow at the incident. Many others who have witnessed the work done by the girls shared that the girls worked from dawn to dusk doing all the tasks in the house and everyone in the household abused them.
Afreen also confirmed that verbal abuse was a routine affair.
“When it becomes dark we are afraid to be inside the house,” shared one of her aunts who has come down after hearing about the death of Hayath Begum. “So we are all sitting outside on the road. There have been cars moving up and down the street which is usually quiet and my brother (Afreen’s father) has been receiving blank calls.”
The family has been advised by some people from the Yadav community to accept some compensation and not pursue the case. Madhu Yadav is a known rowdy-sheeter with some criminal cases again him. The family is naturally scared.
However, after some insistence from the activists and others, Afreen and her family have been provided with security. And now 2 policemen are standing guard at their house.
Khalida Parveen, a prominent activist and one of the fact-finding committee members, has raised questions about the suicide after seeing a photo of the girl hanging from the ceiling. She had supposedly climbed up the bed and placed a bucket and climbed on it and hung herself with her dupatta.
“But the photo shows the bucket placed by the side in the upside-down position while the feet of Hayath Begum are touching the bed. If she kicked the bucket it should have rolled down. If she had hung herself then her feet should have been up in the air not touching the bed. Also, one of her hands was swollen,” she said, “A fair investigation needs to be carried out to assess whether it was suicide or murder. But the police have mentioned abetment to suicide in the charge sheet.”
Representations have been made before the Telangana State Minorities Commission demanding a double bedroom flat and Rs. 5 lakhs to the girl’s family along with a monthly allowance of Rs. 5000.
Apart from compensation strict punishment is being demanded as the perpetrator is a member of the ruling party.
Ibrahim Qureshi is full of remorse and mentioned that he wants to commit suicide as well because he cannot bear the jibes of the people.
Afreen does not want to go to work anymore. She wants to live with her father but is not sure if the stepmother will allow that. She also wants her employer to be punished.
She misses her sister Hayath Begum.
“What generally happens in many cases where the victim and her family are very poor and the perpetrator is rich is that once out on bail, the perpetrator pays some amount to the poor family on the condition that they don’t pursue the case. But this should not happen in the case of Hayath Begum. We should support the family to fight for justice,” said Salma Begum, a lawyer who had also gone to meet the girl and her family with a team of women advocates.
Mushtaq Mallik, President of Tahreek Muslim Shabban during a press conference with the girl and her family announced that his association will take care of Afreen Begum’s food, clothing and studies (Islamic studies) and even her marriage at a later age. Many others have also come forward to support the family with monetary help.
“With these assurances and support, the family should not go back if threatened or lured with money. It is our duty to ensure that the dead girl will get justice,” said Salma Begum.