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The 16-year-old girl, who was gangraped twice in West Bengal and then set ablaze, wanted to study and become a government officer. That was the reason why the family moved to Madhyamgram near Kolkata after she completed class VI in a village school in Bihar, according to her family.
“My daughter wanted to study, she wanted to become an officer. She used to keep telling me, ‘Ma, I want to go to Kolkata to study’. That is why we moved to Madhyamgram. We wanted her to study and realise her dreams. She was a lively girl, a great cook. She would help me with the household work, and she was so pretty,” her mother told The Indian Express. “After all this happened, the only words she uttered were ‘Ma, please get them hanged’.”
The teenager was gangraped twice in October last year and then, after the family shifted house to escape the accused, she was allegedly set on fire by her assailants. She died of burn injuries last month, triggering protests across the state. The state government has alleged conspiracy in the highlighting of the crime.
“We were about to enrol her in a school near the airport after we shifted. We wanted her to get over what happened and continue her studies. Then this happened,” said the mother, who arrived in Delhi with her husband on Tuesday to seek punishment for the killers of her only daughter.
After the girl died, the family members alleged that police put pressure on them to carry out the last rites quickly. They alleged that they were threatened, and when they complained to police, they were asked to move back to Bihar.
On their arrival in Delhi, as the girl’s father approached the National Commission for Women (NCW) and then met President Pranab Mukherjee, demanding a CBI probe, the mother, who has been unwell since her daughter’s death, stayed indoors.
Alternating between long silences and incessant reminiscing about her daughter and what happened to the family after she died, she repeatedly asserted that the family would not leave West Bengal till justice is done. Those looking after her said she may be in need of counselling but before that, she needs to eat. She was originally supposed to go with her husband to meet the President but given her state, the family decided against it.
In his petition to the President, the girl’s father, a taxi driver, wrote: “I brought my daughter from Bihar to Bengal for higher studies. The school in our village… has only till class VI.” He complained about how the family was not allowed to transfer the girl, who had suffered 65% burns, to a hospital which had a burns facility and then after her death had to stave off intense pressure from police to burn the body immediately without waiting for relatives to arrive from Bihar. “We are now determined… I lost my girl on that ground, we will not leave till the perpetrators are hanged,” he said, after coming out of Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Left leaders Brinda Karat, Sitaram Yechury and Shyamal Chakrabarty accompanied him to the NCW and to Rashtrapati Bhavan. President Mukherjee, it is learnt, asked the family how police could take the body away while it was on its way to the mortuary. He also asked them to get in touch with the Home Ministry.
NCW chairperson Mamta Sharma said the commission would set up a three-member fact-finding committee and she would herself go to West Bengal for the inquiry.
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