Tears such that angels weep

The angels cried on her as she was too innocent and naive to understand that the parrots she just freed would be the cause of her death by torture.

Zohra Shah was just an 8-year-old innocent girl when she succumbed to injuries in a local hospital in Rawalpindi. She was brought to the hospital by her killers. Soaked in her blood, the poor angel was unconscious and her entire body turned blue owing to merciless torture and later she died because she was young enough to tolerate the excruciating pain.

She committed two crimes i.e. she freed the expensive parrots and she was a poor domestic worker. Her employer had beaten her like a beast. Imagine a minor girl being kicked again and again in her private parts for countless painful minutes for a crime which wasn’t a crime in her eyes. Being herself a captive, she couldn’t see the parrots in the cage sighing for freedom.

Zohra Shah, an unpaid domestic worker, was killed in the affluent neighborhood of Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s fourth-largest city. After allegedly committing the violence, her employers took the girl to hospital, where staff confirmed signs of torture. Police said  they received information that Zohra succumbed to her injuries after receiving treatment at the city’s Begum Akhtar Rukhsana Memorial Hospital.

One of the employers confessed to police that his wife beat Zohra because she freed the pet parrots. The girl came from Muzaffargarh, a district in southern Punjab about 580 kilometres from the capital Islamabad. Zohra was hired four months ago as a domestic worker to the family of Hassan Siddiqui and his wife Umm Kulsoom.

The victim’s family sent the girl to live and work for good education. Siddiqui kicked the girl in her private parts and there were bruises on her entire body and she was bleeding. There are millions of domestic workers in Pakistan and many of them are minor boys or girls. These poor workers have no other option as they eat and live with the employers in a dreaded environment , they are often found famished and maltreated.

Earlier, Uzma, a 16-year-old girl was killed in Lahore for eating employer’s food. These poor souls are hired on a yearly or monthly basis and they are forced to live in a hostile environment unable to express any joy. They are being witnessed sitting alone in a corner watching their employers having scrumptious food right in front of them while they can only crave any leftovers at employer’s home.

Their eyes are the purest ones because you can see the reality of life in them, their hearts are the heaviest because you can hear the cries and sighs hidden inside them. Not too many selfish eyes in the world will shed tears for them but one thing is certain angels cried on  them.

Use your forum to raise a voice for all the caged souls here in Pakistan. #saynotodomesticworkers.