DELHI: The girl was just 14 when she was picked up from her poor village in eastern India and promised good wages as a maid in Delhi. Instead, she was forced to work as a virtual slave in a wealthy middle-class household.

When she plucked up the courage to complain to the ''placement agent'' who had found her the job, ''he beat me and then he raped me'', the girl, now 17, said. ''He said if I ever tried to run away from home, he would kill off my family and burn down my house.''

Every year, hundreds of thousands of girls are trafficked from rural India to work as domestic servants in middle-class homes in India's fast-growing urban areas. They are expected to work at least 15 hours a day for food, lodging and salaries well below the legal minimum monthly wage of about $125. Many end up cut off from their families, abused and treated as slaves. Some are sexually assaulted.

India erupted in outrage at the gang rape and murder last month of a young woman on a bus in Delhi. But in the same city, experts say, a vast network of child trafficking and abuse operates with society's implicit sanction and official apathy.

''The trafficking of young children, especially girls, under the garb of placement agencies, is the biggest organised crime in India today,'' said Bhuwan Ribhu, of the child rights group Bachpan Bachao Andolan. ''And the worst part is, it is right there in the open, in our homes, and yet invisible.''