FEBRUARY 18, Basant Panchami was a day when cold, wintry days were replaced by balmy spring weather.  A day of rejoicing. For the families of Komal, Kajal and Roshni, young teenagers closely related to each other, Basant Panchami will always bring back memories of young lives blighted by violence.

In the afternoon of that day, the three girls went as usual to collect fodder from the fields. When they did not return after a couple of hours, Kajal’s mother, Bitola, and Roshni’s brother went looking for them. The sound of faint groans led them to the place where all three of them were lying unconscious. At the district hospital, Komal and Kajal were declared dead. Roshni was taken to a private hospital in Kanpur. Her brother told the police that there was foam lying where the girls were found and also coming out of Roshni’s mouth.  He also said that there were no marks of any violence on their bodies which were fully clothed.

The district of Unnao has witnessed many rapes and murders of young women, mostly dalit, in the past two years while the state of Uttar Pradesh itself is now notorious for both the unending cases of violence against women and young girls but also the denial of justice to many.  This latest incident seemed part of a pattern:  the girls were Pasis (SC) and belonged to landless families in the Brahmin-dominated village of Baburaha. The six Pasi families here live in tumbledown huts on gram sabha land with their buffaloes and cows tied outside.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, ‘accounts’ of rape and upper-caste atrocities were soon circulating on social media and elsewhere and, by the morning of the 18th, representatives of various political parties and much of the national media descended on the village only to find their passage barred by the police.  It seemed that everyone’s worst fears would soon be confirmed. 

On the 18th, I was able to visit the Kanpur hospital where Roshni had been admitted.   Her condition was precarious and she was on a ventilator, unconscious.  Her brother had gone back to the village after she was admitted and her mother came there later.   Our demand that the government take full responsibility for her treatment was accepted by the afternoon.

In the village, the administration tried to cremate the bodies at night, immediately after the post mortem. The Hathras incident, however, had made the family members and others alert to such an eventuality and they forced the administration to agree to burying the bodies the next day in the presence of family members after various rituals had been conducted as is customary when the deceased are young, unmarried girls. 

On the evening of Friday the 20th, the police announced that the case had been worked out: Vinay alias Lambu, a young Pasi from the neighbouring village of Pathakpur, worked in the field next to the place where Roshni collected fodder and they often spoke to each other. Soon he wanted to enter into a relationship with her but she turned him down. This infuriated him and he decided to kill her. Accompanied by a minor, Sachin, (SC, Dhanuk), he went to the field carrying a bottle of pesticide mixed with water and some savouries.  They chatted with the three girls and shared the savouries with them.  Then Lambu gave the bottle of poisoned water to Roshni to drink. She had barely sipped some when the other two snatched it from her and gulped the poisoned water.
All three fell unconscious immediately and Lambu and Sachin ran away, leaving the bottle behind.

They were seen by Roshni’s brother who mentioned this to the police during interrogation. Lambu and Sachin were both arrested and they confessed to the crime.

The police statement was received with much disbelief to begin with.  Slowly those who had descended on the village started leaving.  A tragedy reduced to just the death of two and near death of one poor, socially deprived young girls lost much of its newsworthiness.

I visited the village in the morning of the 21st accompanied by Seema Katiyar, secretary, AIDWA UP. Policemen from several thanas were out in full force but were the only outsiders there. We visited Kajal’s home first.  Her father, Suraj Pal was there with several other family members.  He was angry and exhausted.  In the last four days, he had had to endure much more than the unbearable grief of losing his young daughter.  He had been questioned endlessly, forced to experience, again and again, the trauma of his bereavement, hounded by the press and their cameras and by politicians and their supporters. He had had to spend hours in the hospital while the post mortem on his daughter’s dead body had been conducted and then several hours protesting against the police decision to cremate her. The following day, he had spent hours in the hot sun while his child was buried in the field. When he saw us, his frustration exploded. He asked us repeatedly if we had any idea of what he had gone through. His young daughter-in-law was even more agitated than him and she repeatedly asked us if we would bring back her much-loved sister-in-law who had been the lively spark that had brightened all of their lives.  We listened to them in silence, sharing some of their pain.

Suraj Pal’s brother-in-law, Phool Singh, who told us that he was the pradhan of the neighbouring Sohramau village, was a very strong presence there. He defended the government and administration staunchly and said that everything that could have been done for the family had been done: about Rs 5 lakhs had been deposited in each family’s  account (this is mandatory in a case where a person belonging to the SC community suffers an unnatural death), the local MLA had given each of the three families Rs 50,000 and they were also being promised a patta of one bigha of land each.  He told us that he had explained to them that if they made a fuss or expressed any disagreement or dissatisfaction with the government and the administration, they would not be given anything at all. 

Kajal’s mother, Bitola, was completely grief-stricken.  She was sitting huddled on the ground in a corner of the hut and, when we sat near her, she put her head in my lap and wept.

Komal’s father, Saroj, met us outside his nearby hut.  He was quite composed and said that he had not received any help from anyone.  Roshni’s younger brother, standing next to him, looked surprised and Saroj had to admit that he had received assistance from both the MLA and the government. 

A local reporter who had arrived soon after us, took me to meet Komal’s grandmother, Ramkumari, who lived at a short distance from her son’s hut.  Her married daughters, Munni and Chunni had come to be with her. They told us that Komal’s mother had died a few days after her birth and they along with Ramkumari had brought the child up.  When they left after their marriages, Komal continued to stay with Ramkumari.  Saroj married again and, according to them, had nothing to do with his mother or daughter.  It was Komal who looked after her grandmother’s cattle and cooked her meals.  Ramkumari, very frail and quite broken, seemed overwhelmed by both sorrow and fear of the future.  Soon her daughters would leave and she would be left alone to face both grief and uncertainty.  She was not entitled to any compensation or government help and could not expect anything from her son.

Roshni’s family was in Kanpur, at the hospital.  She regained consciousness the next day and her condition improved.  Her statement was recorded by an SDM and, early on the 23rd morning a statement by the SP Unnao was issued saying that Roshini had said that Lambu had given all three of them poisoned water to drink.

Already, within days of the attempt on her life and the murder of her cousins, it was her character that was being discussed in newspaper reports and village gossip, not the cruelty that they had endured. Her family’s upper-caste neighbours in the village that we spoke to seemed more concerned about the fact that Pasi families and their cattle were occupying so much gram sabha land. The girls were described as ‘characterless’.  Soon it will be said that they deserved what they endured.