Last month I hired a maid in the absence of my regular house help who went on a holiday to her village, after a few bad options (high salary and too many rules!) I finally got a young pretty looking girl, smart, chirpy, energetic but very secretive in her disposition This girl did her job very diligently and would finish her work fast but had the habit of taking too many unannounced leaves.
She always wore a mask and covered her hair till she entered my house and wore it again upon leaving. I requested her Aadhaar card the day she joined and would remind her almost every day, however her constant answer was “Oh aaj bhi bhul gayi sorry, kal pakka le aaungi”.
On an incident of 3 consecutive holidays taken by her, and not receiving her Adhaar Card for weeks, I found something fishy and I finally decided to let her go.
Inquisitive thoughts within me wanted to validate her presence on social networks if any and guess what? I found her after filtering her name and her village name. I suddenly came across a profile of a girl who was rather more revealing with her name and face! Clicking on her profile I saw almost half-naked pictures of hers on Facebook which shocked me!
I checked with the person who got her, I was shocked to hear the truth about her. I was told that she was in the flesh trade and operates with an organised gang at night near MG Road daily. Everything then started to make sense to me – Not providing her identity, covering her face in the colony, not being consistent with work days etc.
This is not a stand-alone incident in urban pockets like ours, where living is expensive and girls who come straight from their villages, who are young decent looking, take the easy way out to meet their expensive needs.
Let’s beware and keep checking the identity of the new staff we keep to protect ourselves from this problem. Besides the Adhaar Card which is fake many times, we must check our help online presence. Even corporate jobs require you to submit your social media handles, so why not ask for the help we are hiring?
