Lankan maid arrested for harassing old Emirati employer

A Lankan housemaid who is accused of harassing her old Emirati employer has been arrested. The 70-year-old woman, named Aisha, lives alone in Sharjah.

Her son, Omar, had arranged for the maid, who hails from Sri Lanka, through an agency last month, since his mother refused to live with him.

In the beginning she was extremely helpful, kind and looked after the old lady as if she was her own mother.

“She was almost like a sweet angel,” said Aisha. “ I was so happy with her that I gave her one of my mobile phones. Later, however, she said that she wanted a new one, and I bought her one,” she added.

The old woman claims to have given the maid complete freedom in the house.

“She could watch TV, talk on the phone and eat whatever she wanted. But after a couple of weeks, I noticed a change in her behaviour. After I gave her the first salary, she stopped taking care of me,” Aisha alleged and added, “when I took the matter up with the maid, she started screaming and yelling.”

One day when her son Omar visited her, he saw the housemaid getting out of her room with a bag in hand. “I was shocked. I asked her what she was doing and she said that she was just shifting her bag to another room because the A/C was not working in her’s,” says Omar.

However, he had his suspicions that she was planning an escape. “When I told my mother about it, the kind-hearted woman that she is, she told me to believe what the maid said,” explained Omar.

He, however, notified the agency, and they assured him that they would talk to her and figure out her concerns. But after that things got worse, the housemaid was frustrated.

She demanded another new mobile, which the old woman refused saying she had already purchased one for her just two weeks back. Then the maid started screaming and yelling again at the old lady, and this time she even threw objects at her.

“She was talking on the phone in my room, when I requested her to help me prepare lunch. I asked her to hang up the phone. That’s when she threw the mobile phone at me. It hit me in the stomach,” said Aisha. She immediately went into another room and locked the door and called her son. Omar said he rushed to his mother’s home and called police.

“I heard the maid break things around the house and yell, I was so scared. I wondered what I did for her to treat me like that,” wonders Aisha.

Upon arrest, the maid initially told police that the old woman abused her, however, after sometime she pleaded with the cops to take her back to the old lady’s house. She said that she regretted her acts. “Who I thought was an angel, turned out to be a demon,” says Aisha, Emirates 247 reports.