Doctor, accused of torturing maid,remanded in police custody

PESHAWAR: The city police on Monday obtained a one-day physical remand of a doctor from a local court who has been accused of beating, burning and chopping off the hair of 13-year old girl servant.

Judicial Magistrate, Peshawar Israrullah Khan handed over the accused to the police for one-day physical remand.

The policemen of Shah Qabool Police Station produced Dr Shakeel before the judicial magistrate for obtaining his physical remand.

The public prosecutor submitted before the bench that a 13-year old maid, Ayesha, on Sunday lodged first information report (FIR) against the doctor accusing him of beating, burning and chopping off her hair.

The police, he said, lodged the FIR after receiving the medico-legal department report, which confirmed the girl had been severely beaten up and there were marks of violence on her body.

The girl, hails from Swabi, and worked as a maid at the Dr Shakeel’s residence in Dabgari Garden locality.  The girl alleged that she was tortured, wounds were inflicted on the lower part of her back with a hot iron and her hair cut.

An official of the Shah Qabool Police Station said that in preliminary investigation the doctor claimed that she had stolen jewellery from his house.

Gulalai Ismail,    who works for the rights of domestic workers, told The News that there was a domestic worker (a woman or girl) in every third household in the country.

She said there was no law to protect these workers rights and majority of them were underage.  The rights activist said her organization was receiving cases of violence against the domestic workers.

The provincial government, she said, was the least interested in making laws to prevent the child labour. On the one hand, she said, the domestic workers were underpaid and on the other, there was no law to provide them protection against the owners of the houses.

Some months ago, the then minister for Social Welfare and Women Development Department, Mehr Taj Roghani had stated that the provincial government was preparing a draft bill for domestic workers and it would soon be tabled in the provincial assembly. However, no such bill could be tabled in the provincial assembly.

Another child rights activist, Imran Takkar said various sections of the KP Child Protection and Welfare Act 2010 should be applied in this case. He said that removing a child’s clothes and burning her private parts was a form of sexual assault. However, he expressed concern over the KP’s Child Protection Commission for not playing its due role to protect children.

The NGO worker urged the government to ban hiring of children as domestic workers. He said that domestic workers should be brought under the existing laws on child labour.