Angry villagers on Wednesday pelted stones and stormed into a housing society in Noida alleging that a young woman working as a domestic help in one of the apartments was held captive overnight and thrashed by her employers over suspicion that she had stolen money.
A First Information Report (FIR) against the employers has been filed by the Noida police on the complaint of the 26-year-old woman Zohra Bibi's husband. Bibi's family said that when she did not return home on Tuesday, they went to the housing society Mahagun Moderne, located in Noida's Sector 78, with the other villagers on Wednesday.
Bibi was taken to the hospital in the morning. However, it is still not known where she was during the night. "We waited all night outside the society for her. We went to the apartment but they said she wasn't there. We even took the police. This morning we saw her come out of the society, " a relative of the woman was quoted by NDTV as saying.
Her employers, a couple who lives in the society with their seven-year-old daughter, have accused Bibi of stealing Rs 10,000 and also alleged that she confessed to having committed the crime. However, when they threatened to inform the office of the housing society, she ran away leaving her mobile phone at the apartment.
Bibi, who also works in several other houses in the society, was not held captive, according to other residents. She spent the night in the house of an elderly woman where she works as a domestic help, the residents added.
The villagers broke into the housing society on Wednesday morning. "They entered in my house by breaking the door glass. It was terrifying. It's about our lives and I am afraid about the safety of my family and kid," Mitul Sethi, who runs a playschool in the area, said in the statement, NDTV reported.
Sethi and her family were escorted out of the complex by security guards and were then shifted to an undisclosed location with the permission of the police.
Over 200 villagers, several of whom also work as domestic help in housing societies near their village, stormed into the complex in Noida and got involved in a fight with the security guards, who did their best to keep them out.
Eyewitnesses were quoted by the channel as saying that the protesters, who were carrying stones and sticks, broke open the gate of the complex and attacked the facility office. They ended their protest only after police intervention.
