| Identify us as labourers, not criminals, say domestic workers |
18th February 2009
The domestic worker is usually suspected in every instance of crime
Police have advised householders to maintain
a dossier on domestic helps
Bangalore: Who is the first suspect when an elderly couple is murdered? Whom does the needle of suspicion immediately point to when a gold chain or a ten-rupee note goes missing from the house?
In all the above cases, the domestic help is presumed guilty until proven otherwise. The pattern of investigation by the police and the urban middle-class mindset is geared to suspect the domestic worker in every instance of crime, and the last four cases of murders of elderly people in Jayangar and R.T.Nagar show a continuation of this trend.
Following these incidents, the police have advised householders to maintain a dossier on their domestic helps.
The alacrity with which they are branded as “criminals” has left domestic workers fuming.
More so because their long-pending demand that both domestic workers as well as their employees should be registered with the Labour Department — making both the parties accountable for each others’ safety — has never been conceded to.
Lakshmi P., a cook and domestic help in Jayanagar III Block, has been asked by her employer to give him her bio-data, complete with a photograph.
“Why are we the first suspects every time a murder or a petty theft takes place?” she asks. “Only because we are poor people and have no one to defend us?”
Pushpa S., another worker in the same area, says that the police had rounded up and questioned about 20 sweepers and other workers in the shopping complex opposite the house where one murder had taken place in Jayanagar. “They were kept in the station for an entire day,” she alleged.
“This shows our failure to follow procedures. The police catch a suspect, torture him or her and then do the investigation. And it is always the vulnerable, like the domestic help, who are caught,” says Prakash Kariappa, an advocate with the South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring (SICHREM).
It may be mentioned here that domestic help Renukamma, who was the accused in the murder of retired bank official Indu Rajagopalan (74) and her sister Malathi Rao (80) in April 2001 and subjected to narco-analysis, was acquitted recently.
“We are not saying no domestic help is ever involved in a crime. The point is that when a Satyam case happens, neither the police nor the public make all software companies out to be frauds. The yardstick should not be different for poor unorganised workers,” says Geeta Menon of Stree Jagruti Samiti, who has been organising domestic workers in Jayanagar area.
http://www.hindu.com/2009/02/18/stories/2009021858
|
