It was almost a year ago that Zohra and I came into each other’s lives. I haven’t been in touch with her for months now. She keeps changing her phone number. A workers’ union representative helping her fight her case tells me she contacts them sporadically to find out about court appearance dates.

From a hard-working unit, Zohra and her family have been reduced to near-fugitives.

Every morning, I pass by the shanty that was once her home, but not without a twist in my heart. I know I failed her.

Zohra Bibi’s fate intertwined with mine on that fateful July morning a year ago.

I live in a skyscraper in Noida. Right behind it is a colony of daily-wage construction workers, where Zohra lived with her husband, mother-in-law and two children. She went to work at seven every morning, cleaning several houses at Mahagun Moderne, an upscale apartment complex in the same neighbourhood, and returned late-afternoon.

And then, one day, she didn’t come back home.

Her husband dialled 100 (police) and went to enquire at the last house she cleaned daily before going home. The employers said she left at her usual time. Zohra’s husband, however, refused to believe them and instead kept vigil outside the apartment complex along with some friends and relatives.

Early morning on July 12, a few security guards carried Zohra outside the gate and retreated hastily after dumping her there. Zohra was found with bruises on her body and appeared traumatised. She fainted on seeing her husband and the other men. Her incoherent mutterings led them to believe she might have been locked up and beaten by her employers. The previous evening, she had asked them for her unpaid salary of several months, saying she wanted to quit.

Seeing the condition in which she was found, an angry mob broke into her employer’s home and vandalised everything in sight. This was followed by pitched battles with the police.

I was returning home after walking my dogs. Outside my door I found two men. “Sister, we need your help,” one of them said.

Zohra’s story is one of rights abuse as much as it is about a spiralling gender crisis in a country struggling to ensure an egalitarian society for women.

I tweeted about her, and the online attacks that followed were directed as much at her as at me. From a victim, Zohra became a ‘perpetrator’, a person of questionable character, and an illegal immigrant. She was branded a liar and a thief. Her bruises were dismissed as beatings by an abusive husband.

In all this, her story was eclipsed.

So, what was Zohra’s story?

A woman alleged she was assaulted. Despite her lodging a police report, her employers were not questioned, while she was in and out of the police station almost every day. The men of her colony, including her 15-year-old son, were picked up by the police in the dead of night.

After her last medical examination, the police released a report saying she had not been assaulted; and yet, she had been prescribed pain relievers and anti-inflammatory drugs.

Zohra’s story is not an uncommon one. In 2004-05, there were 3.05 million women domestic workers in urban India, up 222 per cent from 1999-2000. Stories of the abuse of workers, though mostly behind closed doors, occasionally leak out.

“Domestic workers are highly exploited and denied just wages and humane working conditions. They are paid well below the minimum wages for unskilled or semi-skilled workers. The vast majority of live-in domestic workers work a minimum of 15 hours a day, seven days a week. Part-time workers often work in 3-4 different houses for nearly 8-10 hours every day,” says a 2011 National Domestic Workers’ Movement annual report.

When I tried to intervene on request, I too was under constant attack. The male duty officer called me a “nuisance” and a “drama queen” — the very same words used for Zohra. Hundreds of sexist and hateful messages flooded my social media. People abused my family too, and questioned my motives.

The online abuse is sporadic now, but erupts from time to time. Zohra’s FIR against her employers, alleging illegal confinement and assault, has been squashed by the police for “lack of evidence”. She has challenged this in court. Three cases filed by the employers against Zohra and her family for “rioting”, attempt to murder and “damaging property” still haunt them, even after she moved to another neighbourhood to restart her life.

I used to meet Zohra every day for two weeks after the incident. Mostly, we would sit together silently. Sometimes she would ask me, referring to her employers, “Why would they do this to me?”

Every day she looked a little bit smaller.

Nilanjana Bhowmick is an independent journalist based in Delhi

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