ATIYA is dressed in the same printed red dress in which she was discovered three days ago. Her faded orange dupatta is speckled with sequins — a stark contrast to her physical condition. Her jaw looks crooked, her wrist bones are lumpy and protrude at a grotesque angle and upon close observation there are tiny white scars on her fingers. She also looks malnourished.

She is ushered hurriedly into the medico-legal room by a group of her family’s men (not one woman has accompanied her) that has come all the way from a village called Lakkan near Okara. They have gathered at the Nawaz Sharif Hospital, where Atiya is to be examined.

“For three years they did not let us meet the children,” says her maternal uncle Khizar Bashir. “Each time, we were told that the children were sleeping or had gone out to the market or the park. We were told this by Aunty Shah Jahan herself. She would look down from the balcony and tell us to leave.”

The family says that the children were dropped off at PML-N MPA Shah Jahan’s house by their mother Zakia Bibi, who had requested the employers to help the children study. Zakia was never heard from again by anyone, and initially the rest of the family presumed the children were in safe hands.

But over time, after repeated refusals by the MPA’s family to allow a meeting, Khizar began to get suspicious. “But when we spoke on the phone, Akhtar [the boy who died] would assure me that everything was perfect. ‘Aunty’s given me a new shirt,’ he would say sometimes. Or, ‘We went to have ice cream yesterday’. What was really happening there breaks my heart.”

Shortly after Eid, the family received a call. “My other nephew was called by Shah Jahan saying that Akhtar had a high fever,” says Khizar. “When I got there Akhtar’s body was lying on the ground outside in the open air. Flies were buzzing around him.”

Slowly, he says, anger welled up following the shock. “I demanded to know how he had died and why we had not been allowed to see him before,” he says. “But the more I shouted the more they threatened that ‘We know how to fix you if you don’t shut up right now’.” It was then that Khizar called the police help line 15.

But before the police could arrive, the family managed to leave the house.

Khizar has uploaded a video onto his Facebook page where a phone camera records the wounds on the body of the 16-year-old. There are severe cuts on his shins and groin, with the skin on his thighs seriously damaged. He has also posted a picture of the boy, alive and happy, dressed in a shirt and tie. The medico-legal report said that he had been repeatedly tortured with a blunt instrument; he had perichondrial effusion, or a cauliflower ear.

“We want justice,” says Khizar, speaking on behalf of the children’s father, Aslam. “He does not want to face the media, Aslam is a simple man. He does not even want to let the Child Protection Bureau take care of his daughter now that he has her close to him again. But they have offered to pay for everything and to help her recover.”

At a distance from the milling crowd is Ghulam Sarwar Bhatti, the investigation officer. He is holding a wad of police reports. “Even as a police officer, I cannot intervene and monitor any household employing and abusing children, unless an inspector appointed by the Labour Department publicises the matter,” says Bhatti. “There is absolutely no law which criminalises the employment of children in a home.”

This is one reason why child labour in an invisible domain such as private homes is being referred to as a ‘contemporary form of slavery’ by the International Labour Organisation. Yet the government is making no move.

“Ideally the police should have the freedom to nab such employers,” Bhatti continues. “But in practice we rely heavily on complaints. We are unable to prevent torture — we can only act after it happens.”

He is not happy that the MPA’s family is missing. Phone-traces revealed the general area but not the suspect’s exact location. Once the police report is filed by July 20 and if after three calls the family still does not appear, the suspect will be declared an absconder. “It was the MPA’s daughter Fauzia who did this,” Bhatti clarifies. “But does it morally exempt Shah Jahan herself from what happened right under her nose?”

This year, 10 minor domestic ‘helpers’ have been rescued from abusive situations by the Child Protection Bureau. But hundreds of other cases remain unreported, it is believed.

“There was a time when one murder would send even police stations into a state of shock,” says Senior Investigation Officer Mahmood Ahmed Bandesha of the Akbari Gate police station. “Today, people are dying left, right and centre, and witnesses want to stay uninvolved — especially when a high-profile person is involved. Wait and see, I am sure the family will end up accepting blood money. Poor people can only think about their future, they can’t afford to dwell on a dead body.”

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2017