Bhubaneswar, June 15: In the second case of child abuse to rock the state this month, a 12-year-old Dalit girl was allegedly tortured and branded by her employers before she fled to safety yesterday.

Police registered a case against a government employee and his wife yesterday for allegedly torturing Manju Sethi, who used to work in their household as a domestic help.

Yesterday, the girl ran away from the house of Satyajit Sethi, a clerk at the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), after his wife Snigdha allegedly beat Manju up. Unable to bear the torture any longer, the girl took shelter in a grocery shop after running away from the Sethi household. A weeping Manju then narrated her tales of abuse to shopowner Bhaskar Rao.

The shopowner then lodged an FIR on the basis of which a case was registered under Sections 323, 324, 370 and 374 of the Indian Penal Code at the Raygada police station, superintendent of police of Raygada R.K. Sharma said.

Though police interrogated the accused couple, they were yet to arrest the Sethis. Sharma said they would arrest the couple after gathering sufficient evidence. Initial investigations revealed that the girl from Mahapada village under the Balasore subdivisional police station in Balasore district was working in the Sethi household as a domestic help for the past two years. The tale of physical abuse seemed to have started from the first day of her job itself.

Snigdha used to allegedly beat the girl with a rolling stick and brand her with a hot iron road over trivial issues. On one occasion, the woman was accused of hitting Manju so hard that one of her teeth had fallen off. The girl had run away from the Sethi household four months ago only to be brought back by Snigdha’s father.

“We have intimated her family members. The truth will probably come out after the parents of the girl arrive,” the superintendent of police said. The girl is staying in a police station for the time being, he said.

In another development, a CID team today started its probe into the alleged torture of eight-year-old Prasanta Nahak by the Singh Deo couple of the erstwhile royal family in Khariar. The boy is undergoing treatment at the M.K.C.G. Medical College Hospital at Berhampur.

The team headed by a deputy superintendent of police has questioned the boy about the torture meted out to him by Puspalata Singh Deo, the wife of Bhubaneswar Singh Deo. The team visited the Lal Mahal royal palace of the Singh Deos in search of the couple this evening but in vain.

In 2002, Khariar police had lodged a diary against the Singh Deos for allegedly torturing Ambika Singh Nina, a 17-year-old tribal girl of Junani village in Khariar block, who was working as a domestic help in the palace for over nine years. Eight years ago, Puspalata allegedly threw boiling water at the girl for taking time to cook food for the dogs. The couple later implicated the girl in a theft case and did not allow her to leave the palace for eight years. However, police didn’t arrest the couple.