A 60-year-old woman was allegedly stabbed 22 times by her juvenile domestic help at her residence in Dwarka on Friday afternoon.
The 17-year-old domestic help, who was upset at being admonished repeatedly for not cooking well, tried to pass off the incident as a case of robbery until the police questioned him. The boy has been booked for murder.
The victim, Uma Sharma, lived with her husband in Gold Croft Apartments in Dwarka’s Sector 11. Her husband, Pramod Sharma, had retired as an engineer with Krishak Bharati Cooperative Limited and is working for a private firm in South Delhi’s Okhla at present.
The couple’s children are settled in Europe and Dubai. A relative of the victim is a joint secretary-rank officer with the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
No police verificationThe couple had recently hired the boy, a native of Darbhanga in Bihar, as domestic help.
No police verification had been conducted for the boy as he had been referred through a relative.
The woman, who allegedly did not appreciate his culinary skills, would frequently verbally abuse him. This left him seething with rage,” said Surender Kumar, DCP (South-West).
On Friday afternoon, the woman again scolded the boy for what he had cooked. An argument ensued between them, said the police. The woman’s husband was at work at the time.
“The accused picked up a kitchen knife in a fit of rage and repeatedly stabbed the woman, killing her right there,” said a senior police officer.
False alarmThe boy then packed all the jewellery and cash he could lay his hands on, latched the house from outside and raised an alarm that robbers had barged into the house and killed the woman.
Neighbours rushed to the house even as some of them called the police.
The boy was placed under sustained interrogation, during which he broke down and confessed to killing the woman, said the DCP. The stolen items have been recovered.
