An onion, a cry: The story of the girl who went to school for 23 days and a father who couldn’t clear Class X

It is here that six-year-old Bharti Kute choked to death on July 9, allegedly after her father forced an onion down her throat for failing to recognise the number ‘13’ in her notebook. Following her mother’s police complaint, the body was exhumed and a postmortem done, which revealed the onion in her throat.

But that is just one version of the story. In this village of barely 150 houses, there are other accounts — of an unwanted girl child and female foeticide, of a father suffering from mental illness, of a mother since turned out by her in-laws, and of parents desperately wanting their daughter to study.

Lad stresses another point: that Bharti had attended school only for 23 days. “We don’t have a pre-primary school here and kids directly come into Standard I. I don’t know if Bharti attended balwadi (pre-school), but she did seem intelligent. I remember trying to correct her sitting posture. It was a very odd one, she would hunch on her knees and sit. In our school, that is how we have to start — by making them sit in class first. Expecting them to read alphabets or numerals is ridiculous,” she says.

Teacher Swati Lad says expecting a Class I student to read alphabets or numerals is “ridiculous”. (Source: Express photo by Alifiya Khan)

Bharti lived in that house near the school with her grandmother Purnabai, father Raju (30), uncle Sachin (28), mother Anusaya (25) and younger brother Shivaay (2). While father Raju is now under arrest, Anusaya, who went to police against him, and Shivaay no longer live here.

Purnabai says she can’t give details of the incident as she was eating in the next room at the time and couldn’t hear over the television sound. Still, rather than blame Raju, Purnabai believes Bharti herself stuffed the onion in her mouth. “I saw Bharti running out of the room holding her hand over her mouth. Her father, who was hitting her on the back, said an onion was stuck in her throat. I ran to call my younger son, who had gone to a local shop to buy pencils for Bharti,” she says.

Showing the books that she claimed Raju had bought for Bharti, Purnabai says he loved his daughter. “Raju had himself failed Class X but wanted Bharti to study. He wanted to put her in a private school, but we had no money. He had asked Sachin that day to get her a satchel, pencils and books.”

While some villagers have claimed Raju was suffering from a mental illness, Purnabai says he only had epilepsy. “He wasn’t crazy. This story of Raju choking Bharti was made up by my daughter-in-law.”

After Bharti fell unconscious, it was Sachin who rushed her to Kamalnayan Bajaj Hospital, about 5 km from the village. The girl was declared dead on arrival and the hospital asked the family to take the body to the government hospital. Sachin admits that since they didn’t want a postmortem, they never went to the government hospital.

Police say they are investigating why the private hospital didn’t inform them considering it was a medico-legal case.

Sachin denies that they buried Bharti without a postmortem to hush up the matter. “I didn’t want her body to be cut up… It was not because we wanted to hide anything,” he says.

Like Purnabai, he accuses Anusaya of lying. “Maybe she stuffed the onion,” Sachin says.

Police say there is no doubt Raju forced the onion into Bharti, killing her. “He has admitted to his guilt, saying it was over her studies that he got angry,” says Inspector Chatrabhuj Kakade, at Chikhalthana police station.

Relatives of the family gathered at the house after news of the death say Raju was “excited” about Bharti’s studies, but not so much as to kill her.

Lad recalls an incident at the school involving Raju and Bharti that has stuck in her mind. The zila parishad school where Bharti studied has 80-plus students and four teachers. The school doesn’t have electricity, while dirty water from a handpump is its only source of drinking water. The school is up to Class VII, and students who wish to study further have to go to the private Marathi-medium school in the next village.

The teacher remembers that just a week after the children had started school, they did a pictorial chapter on ‘My Family’. “We asked the kids to go home and read it aloud in front of their parents,” says Lad. “The next day, Raju came to the school and asked Bharti to read it aloud in front of him and us. When she succeeded, he was so happy. It was odd, since no other parent came. We would also often see him loitering around the school.”

Anusaya now lives in a small house in remote Satala village, atop a mountain, with Shivaay. While her in-laws say she left on her own, she claims Purnabai threw her out.

Anusaya stands by what she told police: that Raju punished Bharti for stumbling on her counting. There was more, she adds. “Raju never wanted a girl child. He tried to kill her earlier as well by throwing her into a septic tank when she was six-seven months old. Once, he left her alone at a lake while I was at work, but luckily, someone found her and brought her home. He used to beat us up and call us names and I had even complained to the women’s grievance redressal cell of police.”

Inspector Kakade says they have not heard of this foeticide angle.

Anusaya adds, “This time, Raju used her homework as an excuse to kill her. He was a Class X fail, what did he know of studying?”

She remembers Raju yelling at Bharti in the room next to where she was sitting that night. “It was 9.30 pm. He had her book in his hand and asked her to identify the numbers. She stopped at ‘12’ and couldn’t recognise ‘13’. Angered, he slapped her and said, ‘This is what they teach you in school? I will stuff an onion in your mouth and remove it from your behind’. He took an onion from under the bed and forced it down her throat while I watched in horror with my son. Had I intervened, he would have killed us too. My in-laws dug a hole and buried her in the morning before my relatives reached. Two days later, I managed to lodge a police complaint and they dug out her body. They told me her stomach had burst open,” says Anusaya, her expression stony.

Suddenly though, she stops talking and points in her son’s direction. Shivaay is staring at Anusaya’s brother’s mobile phone which has a photograph of Bharti — the only photo the family has of her. The phone has run out of battery as there has been no electricity for the past two days. Anusaya says Shivaay, who was very attached to Bharti, keeps crying and refuses to let go of the phone.

The mother claims Shivaay also remembers what happened that night, and asks him about it. The two-year-old holds his hand over his mouth and makes choking noises, tears streaming down.