Maid retracts statement indicting employer of killing colleague

The controversy trailing the death of a 16-year-old housemaid in Kano has taken another twist as her co-housemaid who earlier said their boss beat her to death has retracted her statement.

Rafia Muhammad had told Daily Trust earlier that the deceased, Khadija Rabiu, died as a result of injuries she sustained from the beating their boss gave her; which was corroborated by the women who washed the corpse; saying they saw injuries on the body.

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The police had said the preliminary report indicated that Khadija died from complications from cat bites; a similar narration given by the suspect.

Rafia had earlier said, “We came back together with our boss and we met Khadija did not do the house chores. When she was asked she said she was ill. From there, our boss started pouring abusive words on her and started beating her with a pestle and she later called me to bring another stick to beat her too. I had even started beating her before I stopped when I noticed she was crying.

“She also used a metal object to inflict injury on her vagina and later asked me to bring out dried pepper from the kitchen and she put it in Khadija’s vagina,” adding that it was when their boss saw that Khadija was lying down and breathing heavily that she took her to a nearby hospital where she eventually died.

Indicts neighbours over false statement

However, in a voice note shared by DSP Haruna Kiyawa, the spokesman of the police in Kano on Tuesday, Rafia said, “It was Aunty Zainab our neighbour and Aunty Hassana a cousin to our boss who forced me to make the earlier statement to newsmen. They threatened me that I will die the same way as Khadija if my boss was finally released. So that was why I made the false statement. It did not happen at all.”

In a separate interview conducted and shared by the police spokesman, the suspect, Fatima Hamza (Ummi), said her maid, Khadija, who spent about four months in the house was ill for two days before she died from complications from the cat bites.

Mistress speaks

Recounting what happened, Fatima said, “I did not know that the cat used to bite her until when one day she came out from the room crying and when asked she said it was the cat that bit her, and she also complained that it used to bite her. From there I took her to the hospital for treatment. She was on drugs.

“On the fateful day when we came back, I noticed that she was dizzy, I asked her to go to bed. It was later I realised that she was dizzy because she overdosed on the medicine given to her. I felt that she would be okay when she slept.

“I didn’t know that she had already passed on until when I called my brother in-law who took us to the hospital where she was confirmed dead.”

Effort to get the status of the police on the investigation was unsuccessful as the police spokesman did not answer calls put across to him by our reporter after he had shared the recorded statements.