Police in Rawalpindi in northeastern Pakistan detained a couple accused of murdering a 13-year-old domestic worker over stolen chocolates.
The child, who was identified only as Iqra, was reportedly working as a domestic help with the couple and preliminary police investigation revealed that she had been tortured.
She died from multiple injuries in a hospital on 12 February.
Rashid Shafiq, his wife Sana, and their unidentified Quran teacher were arrested for the suspected murder of the teen by the police.
Iqra had been working as a domestic worker since she was eight, earning just £23 a month, as her father, a farmer, sent her to work due to debt.
Police said Iqra’s employers accused her of stealing chocolates, and initial findings revealed severe abuse.
The teacher reportedly took Iqra to the hospital but left after telling staff that her father was dead and her mother was not around, reports said. It is unclear if she believed this to be true.
Iqra’s father, Sana Ullah, a 45-year-old farmer, told the BBC that she worked for the Shafiq family because he was in debt.
“I felt completely shattered inside when she died,” Sama Ullah told the outlet.
According to Iqra’s grieving father, police informed him last Wednesday that his daughter had been hospitalised. When he arrived, she was unconscious and died minutes later from multiple injuries.
Human rights activist, Shehr Bano, condemned the abuse on social media. “My heart cries tears of blood. How many... are subjected to violence in their homes every day for a trivial job of a few thousand?” she wrote on X.
“How long will the poor continue to lower their daughters into graves in this way?” she added.
An autopsy will reveal the full extent of Iqra’s injuries.
The case has sparked outrage with a hashtag demanding justice for the teen drawing tens of thousands of views and rekindling debates on child labour and domestic workers’ abuse in Pakistan.
In Punjab, children under 15 cannot legally work as domestic workers, yet an estimated 3.3 million children in Pakistan are engaged in child labour, according to data.
In 2020, another couple in Rawalpindi was arrested for allegedly torturing and murdering their eight-year-old maid after she accidentally freed two expensive parrots. The girl, hired by her uncle with promises of education and a small salary, was brutally beaten and later died in hospital. Medical reports revealed signs of severe abuse and possible sexual assault, reports at the time said.
In 2018, a judge and his wife in Islamabad were sentenced to one year in prison for unlawfully confining their 10-year-old maid, burning her hand over a missing broom, beating her with a ladle, and locking her in a storeroom.
In another case, a doctor and her husband allegedly tortured their 14-year-old domestic worker to death, initially claiming she had fallen down the stairs. An autopsy later confirmed she had been subjected to severe abuse.
