The shrieks pierced the air of the fancy South Delhi colony, revealing that something was very wrong in the apartment where a 50-year-old woman, lived with her 85-year-old mother and their domestic help.
An anonymous phone call provoked a visit from members of an NGO and the local police to the house in the upmarket Vasant Kunj area.
It took them four hours to persuade the owners to let them in. They found the women's domestic help - believed to be in her teens- lying on the floor, semi-naked, her head wounded and gashes all over her body.
"The whole neighbourhood said we used to hear screams but nobody dared to come forward and rescue this poor girl," said Rishi Kant, an activist who was part of the rescue team.
The girl, who is from Jharkhand, is now in hospital. A part of her skull is fractured; doctors say she was lashed with knives.
"It is horrible and barbaric," said Kiran Walia, Delhi's minister for women and child development after visiting the girl in hospital. She has promised a fast-track court will handle the trial of the girl's employer, Vandana Dhir.
The girl has told the police that her employers, who she spent a year with, ordered their dogs to bite her, that she was hit often with sticks, brooms and knives, and that she was forced to remain semi-naked so that she could not leave the apartment to seek help.
The case has highlighted the abuse of domestic help in the capital where thousands of workers, often children trafficked from remote and poverty-stricken states, toil for long hours in homes with almost no legal protection.
In April last year, Indian police arrested a wealthy doctor couple in Delhi who locked up their 13-year-old maid while they went away on holiday. She was rescued by fire-fighters when neighbours spotted her crying on an outside balcony.
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