A multi-agency task force rescued a 16-year-old girl from an Abul Fazal Enclave-II residence in southeast Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh after she was allegedly held captive, starved, and subjected to physical torture for nearly a year.
She had been forced to work 20 hours a day. Acting on a formal complaint filed by the Association for Voluntary Action, the joint enforcement unit—comprising Delhi Police, the Labour Department, and child welfare advocates—executed a coordinated raid on November 3 and 4 under orders from the Kalkaji Sub-Divisional Magistrate. The minor, originally from the Shram Vihar settlement in Shaheen Bagh, was taken into protective custody from the residence of an employer identified as Sadaf.
A harrowing picture of systemic exploitation emerged in the victim's official statement before the Child Welfare Committee. The employer forced her into relentless manual labor from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily, requiring her to scrub floors, clean utensils, and maintain the household on minimal sustenance. Sustenance was scarce. She received tea around 11 a.m., subsisted on scraps, and was once starved of both food and water for three consecutive days as punishment for minor errors.
But the physical cruelty proved worse. Medical examinations documented multiple burn scars across her back, hands, and hips, alongside deep lacerations on her head. The teenager told authorities that the employer routinely burned her with an electric iron and wounded her with a heated knife. When injuries festered, the employer avoided clinical facilities, opting instead to procure over-the-counter painkillers from local pharmacists to hide the abuse. Her isolation was complete—she was permitted to speak to her parents only two or three times over the course of an entire year, with her face covered during video calls to conceal visible trauma.
Fear kept the teenager silent initially after death threats were issued against her family if she spoke out. Yet, after being removed from the premises, she recounted the full chronology of abuse before a metropolitan magistrate and child protection officials. Following her testimony, the Child Welfare Committee ordered her immediate admission to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for reconstructive and trauma care. The teenager told the committee that she aims to return to the classroom and become a schoolteacher.
Labour authorities established that an intermediary had placed the teenager in the household and that she received a meager ₹18,000 for nearly twelve months of unbroken labor. The Kalkaji Sub-Divisional Magistrate has formally directed the Shaheen Bagh Police Station to file a first information report under the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015. No arrests have been made as Delhi Police finalize the evidentiary chargesheet.