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Alstom executive case: My nails were pulled out, says girl to cops

Vasant Kunj help says employer tore paper slip with numbers of relatives, cut her off from kin.

In the hours she was to meet her mother for the first time in three years, she asked those around her whether she was looking good. They were quiet, silenced by the injury marks on her face. From a distance, she and her mother did not recognise each other. She bore the scars of torture, while her mother had grown frail in the three years that they had been apart.

They heard each other, but communication seemed to be a problem Her mother spoke Santhali, which she no longer understood. She spoke in Hindi, which her mother had never learned.

The girl was 14 when a neighbour, Lakhi Ram, approached her mother and asked her if she was willing to send her daughter to Delhi to work. The mother agreed.

The girl worked as a help at the house of Vandana Dhir, the Country Communications Director at Alstom, who is now under arrest.

In her statement recorded under Section 164 CrPc, which is to be produced before the court on Saturday, the girl claimed that her nails were pulled out and that she was often beaten with a hot pan. She alleged that she was often forced to eat and sleep in the bathroom. Her statement also says that Dhir tore the piece of paper in which she had written the phone numbers of her relatives.

In her statement, the girl said she once relieved herself on the floor of the washroom as the western commode did not suit her. This angered Dhir, who allegedly asked her to drink the urine to teach her a lesson.

Lakhi Ram?s wife Dorothy, who ran the placement agency, was arrested on Friday. The two have brought several girls to Delhi and for a commission, sold them to placement agencies, police said.

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First published on: 05-10-2013 at 08:29 IST
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