Delhi: Retracing steps of Jharkhand tribal girl presumed dead

NEW DELHI: Presumed dead since May, the trafficked tribal girl reunited with her family in Jharkhand on November 18, had been living with a Gurgaon-based NGO since July. She worked at the NGO’s rehabilitation centre for almost four months before she expressed a desire to return home to Jharkhand.
Documents accessed by TOI showed that the girl was located by a cop at Sector A in Vasant Kunj on the afternoon of July 20.She recorded a statement at the Vasant Kunj (north) police station in which she said she was married and the mother of a five-year-old son in Jharkhand’s Gumla district.
After these Daily Diary entries in the police station, she was taken to Safdarjang Hospital for a medical check-up. Her age was entered as 22 years in the medico-legal case paper.
She was then taken to NGO The Earth Saviours Foundation, based in Bandhwari village in Gurgaon. The letter submitted by the cop to the NGO states the girl claimed she had nowhere to live in Delhi. Veena Mehra of Earth Saviours confirmed the girl was brought to the shelter on the night of July 20. “Since the medico-legal document said she was not a minor, we took her in,” explained Mehra.
The girl worked mainly in the kitchen during her stay there. She also established an affinity with an abandoned six-month-old boy and took care of him. “On November 14, she gave us her home address and said she wanted to go back to her village,” said Mehra. The NGO checked the address and reunited the girl with her family on November 18.
A Delhi Police team has spoken to the girl in Jharkhand, and DCP (Outer) Seju Kuruvilla said police also visited another village from where another girl trafficked to Delhi by Manjeet Kerketta is said to be missing.
The girl told Jharkhand Police that she had left home with one Ravindra for Ranchi but had been taken to Tamil Nadu and then to Chandigarh, before she came to Noida. She had left the house she was employed by in Noida at the time she was found by the cop in Vasant Kunj.
Delhi Police investigating officers maintained that Kerketta had confessed not only to bringing the girl to Delhi and placing her as a domestic help, but also murdering her in May with the help of aides Gauri, Sahu and Rakesh when she began demanding her overdue salary.