The Colombo Magistrate’s Court today (July 24) granted permission to the Kirulapone Police to detain MP Rishad Bathiudeen’s wife who was arrested in connection with the death of an underage domestic aide at the parliamentarian’s private residence.
Accordingly, Shabdeen Ayesha, 46, will be interrogated for 48 hours under detention orders.
Meanwhile, the Borella Police has obtained a 48-hour detention order on the lawmaker’s father-in-law Mohamed Shabdeen, brother-in-law and the intermediary who provided child labour to the Bathiudeen family.
The four suspects were produced before Colombo Additional Magistrate Kanchana Neranjala de Silva earlier today.
On July 15, it was reported that a 16-year-old girl, who was serving as domestic help at the Bathiudeen residence, had succumbed to severe burn injuries while receiving treatment at the Colombo National Hospital after receiving treatment for 12 days.
The girl, who was residing in the Dayagama area, had been 15 years of age when she was brought to the parliamentarian’s private residence at Bauddhaloka Mawatha for domestic work last October.
The results of the post-mortem on the girl’s death had revealed that she had been sexually exploited.
Thereby, the former minister’s wife, father-in-law and the middleman in question were taken into custody on Friday morning (July 23) based on the testimonies recorded from nearly 20 individuals, autopsy results and the evidence gathered by the investigating officers which pointed to the fact that the deceased girl was subjected to abuse.
In addition, the 44-year-old brother-in-law of MP Bathiudeen was also taken into custody Friday for allegedly sexually abusing a young woman who worked as a domestic helper at the lawmaker’s official residence from 2015 to 2019.