On Saturday evening in East Delhi, police broke into an apartment and to their horror they found a 17 year old girl living among garbage.
The police started investigating after a nearby shopkeeper informed them that they could hear a girl crying from the apartment on a regular basis.
Residents spoke up and said the mother came to the apartment twice a day to feed the girl. She would also give the girl sleeping pills to put her to sleep. The reason behind the mother’s horrid actions is still not known.
After raiding the place, the police found this girl living among garbage with only a table fan. The girl was dirty and it didn’t look like she had bathed for a long time. The girl was in bad shape and disoriented having being locked away for what looked like nearly a year.
The shopkeeper who called the police explained what led him to do it, “The person who lives opposite the accused’s ’empty’ house, first heard the girl crying during the wee hours. The next morning, he came and told me about it. That day, I stayed in my shop till late, only to see if I could hear someone crying as well. It didn’t take me long to discover where the voice was coming from.”
He then explained him confronting the mother when she came in the morning to feed the girl, “I told her that I know her younger daughter was confined inside the house but she insisted that wasn’t the case. She said she came there twice a day only to clean the house. This seemed bizarre as she never carried a garbage bag with her.”
He then was appalled by the mother’s reaction when he caught her lie, “When I cornered her on this point, on the garbage, she had no answer. She instead took out cash from her wallet and asked me not to inform the cops about anything. It was then that I made up my mind and told the beat officer everything.”
The Senior police at the sight said, “Her condition was poor as she had not bathed for quite some time. She was immediately taken to hospital for treatment.”
Locals in the area were shocked to see the condition the girl was living in. They could barely walk in the room because of all the garbage lying around.
The mother had divorced her husband and refused to let him see the girls. The media spoke to the ex-husband who said, “I called up my ex-wife several times but she hardly ever took my calls. She knew that all I would demand was to meet my daughters – to which she could never agree. I even wrote many letters to them, but never got a response.”
The mother lived a few houses over with her older daughter, who is the sole worker for the family. The mother and the older daughter continuously justified and denied that the younger daughter was ill treated.
The older daughter went as far as explaining that the house was ‘slightly’ dirty because her mother was not keeping well and couldn’t clean the house.
The victim was admitted to the Lal Bahadur Hospital for treatment. The girl is also going to be given counseling for her recovery. The girl is in a very depressed condition and her custody has been handed to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC).
A senior officer on the case reported, “After counseling, we will produce her before the CWC and further action will be taken as per its directions.”
The mother and older daughter have been arrested and further investigation is being conducted.
