Maid and the ‘monsters’

Tale of a 10-year-old girl, how she fled from the house ofher tormentors


BY A GT REPORTER

PANJIM: How did the 10-year-old girl ill-treated and physically tortured for six months by her employers, the Porvorim-based Pednekars, escape from her masters’ clutches?
Sheer luck!
She slipped out of the house on Saturday when her employer, Audhumber Pednekar, a civil engineer by profession was at work and his wife Meenaxi and sister-in-law Rekha alias Tina Waghela were too busy to notice her.
Meenaxi was feeding her twins in the bedroom and Tina was in the bathroom, when the girl managed to escape and run towards the main road. There, she got on to a bus headed for Mapusa.
She wasn’t carrying even a single penny and fortunately encountered a humane bus conductor who let her go, perhaps pitying her for her physical condition.
It was then that Mapusa police located her in their jurisdiction and on inquiry the whole episode got exposed.


Porvorim police were then immediately informed and Save Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - India was roped in after which an FIR was registered and action initiated.
Meanwhile, co-accused in the case, Tina Waghela is absconding from the day the offence was booked against her and the Pednekar couple on Saturday night.
Audhumber has already got bail from the Children’s Court in the case in which he along with his wife Meenaxi and sister-in-law Tina, are booked under sections 324 (injuring flesh) read with section 34 (common intention) of Indian Penal Code, section 7 C, 8 (2) 9 of Goa Children’s Act, 2003 (employing a minor child for domestic help, etc) and section 3 of Prevention of Atrocities (Schedule Caste/Schedule Tribes) Act.
The police, meanwhile, are on the job to trace Tina, whose anticipatory bail plea will be heard in the Children’s Court tomorrow along with Meenaxi’s, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Gundu Naik, told GT.
Gundu Naik is handling the case since Tuesday when police invoked section 3 of the Prevention of Atrocities (SC/ST) Act, making it mandatory for an officer of DySP’s rank to investigate. Statements of some seven witnesses have been recorded, although most of them have not come out publicly, fearing retaliation by the Pednekars.
A top police official said, Audumber, who is since released on bail, has “to a certain extent” admitted beating the girl. He said they did not pick up Meenaxi on Saturday night itself because she was nursing their six-month-old twins.
“We had to take swift action on Saturday night soon after registering the FIR. We rushed to the house and arrested Audumber. Meenaxi was with her six-month-old twins and arresting her at that late hour would have separated her from her breast-feeding kids,” the police official said.
Meanwhile, a medical board comprising three senior GMC doctors re-examined the 10-year-old girl for about three-and-half-hours. The report will be released tomorrow and is expected to be very volumnous as against the first one, which was just quarter page.
The first report was produced before the Children’s Court to buttress the police’s plea to reject Audumber’s bail application on Monday. It was only a ‘provisional certificate’.
DySP Naik however declined to comment by only stating that the first medical report mentioned ‘thick burn injuries’ some five-to-seven days old.