FARIDABAD: Her frail body is marked by deep gashes, scratches, wounds on the head and burn marks on the back. Just about 13 years old, this girl's tormentor is allegedly a single woman in her early twenties from Patna pursuing a BTech degree at a private university in Faridabad.The accused, identified as Sneha, lives in a rented flat in Kanishka Towers , an upper middle class gated society where the child was subjected to abuse. The case has shocked residents, some of whom had seen the child bleeding once or twice before and had tried to reach out. But the child kept silent. In bondage for domestic work for nearly two years, the child finally broke after receiving a beating at night. On Wednesday morning, she chose to jump off the balcony of her employer's apartment on the 11th floor. She had hoped to land on the parapet below and make it to the balcony of a neighbour, and to freedom. Instead, she fell into the balcony below after tearing through a bird net. She lay there, semiconscious, from 9am till after 4pm.While her employer was arrested on Wednesday, the child was rescued by residents who got the vacant house opened and called the cops.She is in a protection home in Faridabad, on the orders of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), and is likely to be produced before CWC on Friday. In her statement to CWC, the girl said "she wanted to run away from the beating inflicted on her".Police have registered an FIR at Saria Khwaja police station and have invoked provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015. The accused, Sneha, is now in jail. A shocked Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi tweeted, "Cases of minors as domestic help should be strongly condemned. I urge all to come forth against child labour."From the girl's own account, recorded by CWC, it turns out that she was known to the accused and her parents. Her parents worked for the accused's father in Bihar. It is learnt that the 13-year-old lived near the accused's house in Patna while her parents were engaged in sand- and brick-related work. Around two years ago, the survivor was packed off to Delhi, allegedly by the accused's parents, to live with their daughter. She did not know she would be a domestic help and had not anticipated that the woman who she still calls "didi" would beat her.The child, who has never attended school, did all the domestic work — cleaning, sweeping, cooking, washing clothes and maintaining the house. She was not paid anything. The child's statements to the CWC, now part of the police record, allege she was not just being forced into child labour but was also a bonded labourer. The child had no clue what her wages were and assumed that her employer's parents were giving the money she thought she was earning to her labourer parents as and when needed.When TOI visited Kanishka Towers, the residents said they were very disturbed that a child had suffered so long at the hands of a resident. TOI visited the house next to the one from where the child was rescued. The lady there, and other neighbours, said they realised something was wrong only when the accused came down to an apartment on the 10th floor at around 1.30 pm to ask if she could go to their balcony and call out to her maid who, she said, had apparently slipped into the balcony of the flat next door.After she left, the neighbours felt there was something amiss. By 4 pm, RWA members had contacted the owner of the vacant flat and gotten the keys. Inside, they found the child lying in the balcony.Activist Rishikant of the voluntary organisation Shakti Vahini, who has been following the case from the time the girl was rescued and was present when the girl was taken to the protection home, told TOI the case showed the survivor was so traumatised that she took extreme and desperate measures to escape. "The RWA has played a crucial role in the rescue. This is an example of how society has a key role in preventing crime and reporting crime. In this case, besides the JJ Act, provisions of the IPC and bonded labour should also be invoked as the child did not get any wages and was attacked grieviously," Kant said.

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