A senior official of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and his wife were arrested on Friday on the charge of torturing their 15-year-old help.

Shree Prakash Mishra, 38, a deputy general manager of RBI, and his wife Madhuri Das, a homemaker, had been torturing Manjari Nayak for the past few days at their Alipore home, police said.

“They confined Manjari in a room for two days and denied her food. The girl was also beaten up,” said an officer.

The couple were charged with “voluntarily causing grievous hurt” and produced in Alipore court on Friday afternoon. They were released on bail.

Mishra lives in a central government housing complex on New Road in Alipore with his wife and two sons. A preliminary probe revealed the duo had employed Manjari, a resident of Rourkela in Orissa, around five years ago.

A senior officer said the couple should have been booked under the Child Labour Act, which prohibits hiring children below 14 years. But an investigating officer said cops needed to confirm when the girl was employed.

“We will contact the girl’s family to determine when she was employed by the accused. We are also probing how long the duo had been torturing her,” the officer added. He said Madhuri Das had told the police Manjari was the daughter of one of her distant relatives.

The police said Manjari told them her employers beat her up on Thursday night and locked her in a room. She managed to escape early on Friday and rushed to the caretaker of the housing complex.

“She told him about the torture and he took her to SSKM Hospital. There were bruises on her hands, legs and back. Cops posted at the hospital alerted Alipore police station,” the officer said.