The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Domestic help comes under the scanner again

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Saturday, Apr 29, 2006

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Domestic help comes under the scanner again

A police officer has remarked that people are risking their life and property by employing workers whose credentials they are not aware of, writes Marri Ramu

There is nothing wrong in depending on servants but not taking precautions before employing them is dangerous. Police try to drive home this point whenever an offence allegedly involving servants or maids is reported.

The brutal murder of a financier in his bungalow, pointing the accusing finger to four workers, at Khairatabad on Friday once again brought this crime pattern connected to servants under sharp focus. All the material and circumstantial evidence suggest that four servants of the victim and his elder brother could be behind the killing.

This is not an isolated case. There are many examples like the twin murder of an industrialist and his cook at Mount Nasr apartments near Ravindra Bharathi, killing of a jeweller's wife in her house at Banjara Hills and homicide of a doctor and his wife at Tarnaka. Recently, a local court had sentenced three of the accused in the Mount Nasr case to life imprisonment.

If these are cases of murder for gain, a large number of thefts connected to maids are reported regularly especially in posh areas like Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills. "A less-noticed fact is that workers hailing from other States turned out to be the culprits in most of such murder cases," an investigator observed.

In the financier Jasbir Singh Sadana's case also, all the four suspects were not locals.

"People are risking their life and property by employing workers whose credentials they are not aware of," a police officer remarked.

Dangerous trend

When detectives asked Singh's family members about details of the suspects, all that they could provide was photo of one of them.

Another dangerous trend, sleuths say, is making cash and property transactions before the servants. In some cases, employers were seen giving complete freedom to workers. Police believe that these two things could precisely have led to the double murder at Nasr apartments.

Though there is no 100 per cent foolproof security system, the police say checking earlier records of the workers is advised before employing them. Taking opinion of a person who knows the worker would reduce the risk to some extent. Controlling access to workers inside the houses during nights is another step.

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