Amid ghosts of her dead, Bilqis gives birth to a girl

On Sunday, a CBI team exhumed remains of four of the victims—three of them women, one a child—from the bed of a seasonal rivulet in the jungles of Dahod. All the bodies were headless.

Understandably, the happiness over the coming of the newborn was subdued by the trauma of the news from the riverbed; one of the remains could be that of Bilqis’s three-year-old daughter. Her husband informed her about the bodies dug up after she had given birth to their new child.

‘‘She knows about what’s happening there. She was kept in isolation for a week before the delivery so that she could have some peace of mind,’’ said Yaqoob, her husband.

The news has made both Bilqis and Yaqoob hopeful, though they are a bit cautious. ‘‘We came to know that some bones and clothes have been recovered. But the police have not come to us for identification. We have trust in the Supreme Court and we will help them when they come to us,’’ said Yaqoob. Bilqis herself looked calm, almost numb. Sapped after the delivery, she could manage only a faint smile before lapsing into a brooding gaze. ‘‘I am not thinking about it. I don’t want to,’’ was all she said.

Yaqoob did most of the talking. ‘‘We informed her father in Baria yesterday itself but he has not been able to come and see her. By late evening he could come,’’ he said.

Others in the family too preferred to remain silent, with even Id celebrations not making much of an impact.