THE arrest of the Biman Bangladesh Airlines managing director and his wife over the torturing of an 11-year-old domestic worker not only points to a continued exploitation but also exposes the persistent absence of legal accountability. The victim’s father said that in June 2025, he had let his daughter work at the house of the accused as a caregiver, based on an informal agreement that the accused would bear the cost of her marriage. On January 31, when the accused asked him to take the girl home, he found her severely ill, bruised and battered. This is neither the first case of inhuman torture of a child domestic worker nor the first case of arrest. In May 2025, a 12-year-old who was allegedly raped by her employer and the violence came to light when the girl was sent to hospital. In February 2023, the tortured body of a 10-year-old domestic worker was recovered from a refrigerated van in front of a hospital at Moghbazar in Dhaka. In that case, the accused employer, a journalist, was eventually arrested. The swift arrest in this case is a necessary first step, but arrests alone do not constitute justice.
Torture and economic exploitation expose the lack of legal protection for domestic workers. The limited legal protections available are frequently ignored, especially when the accused employers are from economically or politically powerful backgrounds. Rights activists allege that arrests are made in reported cases, but the accused generally manage the legal bureaucracy with out-of-court settlements. What matters now is a transparent investigation, an impartial prosecution and a trial free of interference. It is equally important to address the legal vacuum. Domestic workers remain legally unprotected, generally employed through verbal agreements; and their wages and work hours are arbitrarily decided by their employers. The Domestic Workers Protection and Welfare Policy 2015, meant to safeguard the worker rights, remained unimplemented because of successive governments’ negligence and the lack of will. The policy was expected to fill this vacuum and empower workers with legal entitlement and bring their employers under the purview of legal oversight. It requires the enlistment of domestic workers, mandatory permission from guardians for appointing children below 12 years as domestic helps, timely payment, leave with pay when needed, medical treatment of domestic workers by their employers and compensation in case of accidents. However promising the policy sounds, it is pointless until this is put to action.
In the policy vacuum, the government has recently proposed to develop a complaint mechanism for domestic workers, but it must ensure that the promise becomes a reality. Legal measures alone cannot bring about fundamental changes and a social movement is necessary to bring about ideological change among employers and in society.
