Once there were 3 sisters

As a small village in Maharashtra’s Bhandara district tries to figure out what led to three minor sisters being allegedly sexually assaulted and murdered there last month,it is hurda that is being seen as one of the only certain leads. With much shrouded in mystery,it is confirmed to be one of the last words anyone heard any of the three sisters speak.

The three siblings—10,nine and six years old—were found dead inside a well in Lakhani tehsil’s Murmadi village on the afternoon of February 16. The well borders a paddy field,near National Highway-6. Their bodies were discovered two days after the siblings went missing—they hadn’t returned home from school on February 14.

As 10 police teams,forensic scientists,medical officers,and villagers doubling up as part-time detectives pore over the mystery,what has emerged so far is the story of a lonely mother and her three daughters. The girls were known to steal money at times from home to buy sweets. They loved chocolates,especially Gems that came packed in a ball with a toy.

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When their bodies were found floating in the well,the younger sisters were in their school uniform (white shirt with blue pinafore),but the eldest was in dark blue,knee-length tights and a long,red T-shirt. Their grandmother reported them missing at 5 pm on February 14,though a missing report was lodged only post midnight.

The clinical post-mortem conducted at noon on February 17 by a team of five doctors (19 hours after the bodies were fished out) couldn’t reach a consensus on the cause of death. The eldest and youngest showed signs of “dry drowning (no water in the lungs and stomach)”,indicating they were dead before their bodies touched water,while the nine-year-old had “sufficient water intake”,hinting she “could have had enough life in her to gulp water as she drowned”. A medical officer said circumstances ruled out suicide.

Shocking as the deaths were,the doctors say it was “sexual assault” that made it one of the “rarest trauma cases” they had handled. A medical officer who examined the girls said,“All were sexually assaulted.” The six-year-old suffered the worst trauma and may have died first,during the assault,according to the doctors.

However,the evidence is inconclusive on whether the insertion was penile “or done with some object”—a question the police have raised.

On the other hand,the forensic report has raised doubts about the entire rape theory. While bodies decay slower in water—with the well temperature lower than the outside temperature—it had rained all of February 15 evening. The bodies were also kept in the open for over 12 hours and examined only the next day. Police believe this could have led to wear and tear near the skin and led medical officers to conclude sexual assault. They add that the eldest girl’s plaits were found tightly tied and the jewellery the sisters wore was not touched. Besides,there were no injury marks or any sign of clothes being torn.

The February 15 rain means any possibility of finding external DNA remains bleak,says an officer.

Superintendent of Police Dr Arti Singh said all angles were being probed and experts’ view was being taken on the sexual assault aspect. “We are positive of a breakthrough,” she said.

While there is no consensus on rape,police are,for now,investigating on those lines.

Angles as extreme as black magic,of men with sexually transmitted diseases assaulting and “sacrificing” minor girls,a property dispute in the family and revenge are also being probed. Family members,including the mother,continue to be questioned.

A toxicology report has ruled out poison. A forensic test using algae present in the well’s water is expected to help establish whether the girls were killed and thrown in or died because of drowning. Digested food in their bodies indicates they died at least four hours after their last meal,though even this has multiple views.

Medical officers and forensic experts also differ on the time of death.

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Lakhani tehsil is known to be the education capital of Vidarbha,with schools bordering its three gram panchayats. Murmadi itself is a small settlement with doctors,engineers and labourers working in a nearby Ashok Leyland plant,apart from hardware distributors and rice cultivators.

On the morning of February 14,the three girls were readied for school by their grandfather,an ex-employee of Ashok Leyland. “I clipped their nails as they were too long,” recalls the 66-year-old. Ironically,this means the investigators haven’t been able to pick the DNA of their assaulters from the nails—usually a reliable source of evidence.

Their father,who did odd jobs,died four years ago after an illness.

While the younger sisters studied in a primary school near their home,the 10-year-old had to cross NH-6,then walk through a market to reach her secondary school.

On February 14,they left for school around 9.30 am. Except,it has now been found that the eldest daughter never went to school that day,though she had her tiffin of rice,dal and pickle. It was when the search for the girls began that the 10-year-old’s bag was found in the house’s rear godown. “She had walked through the gate,but sneaked in from the rear door,changed out of her uniform,left her bag and walked out… We never saw her,” says her grandmother,56.

At the primary school,Laxmi Bante,30,the mid-day-meal cook,recalls seeing the eldest girl leaving with her two sisters around noon that day. “When I called out after them,she said their mother was calling them. She was wearing something red and blue,” says Bante.

Principal A P Gajbiye and the only teacher in this school of four classes and 36 students were suspended on February 21 for lax security. The statements of more than seven classmates of the two younger children have been recorded.

A curious 10-year-old looking out her class window saw them leaving and remembers they didn’t turn right towards their house,but left,towards the highway. Another classmate,who would later drop the school bags of the younger girls at their home,recalls the middle sibling saying that her sister had come to pick them up. “Mummy petrol pump cha javal bolavli ahe,hurda khayla (Mummy has called us to the petrol pump,to eat hurda).” This is now a recorded statement with the police.

Two other classmates have spoken of having sneaked out with the younger siblings a little earlier to buy chocolates from an adjoining store—a green-coloured Gems ball and a bar of Perk for Rs 5. “They always had money. They treated us,” says a nine-year-old who went with them.

The shopkeeper’s version is slightly different. “First,the three siblings came at 12.30 pm and picked up a Gems ball for Rs 30. Later,the younger two came with two of their friends and bought a Perk and a Munch,each for

Rs 10,” says Maruti Padole,58,the owner of Sai Kiran general store.

Nobody saw the girls after that,till 3 pm. Around this time,a friend of the eldest girl who was returning from school claims to have seen her leaning against a wall next to the Hindustan Petroleum petrol pump along NH-6. She has also claimed the 10-year-old enjoyed “travelling to adjoining villages and wandering,eating Chinese and generally spending hours with friends in a park”. Staff at a food stall along NH-6 remember seeing her there at least once,eating spicy rice. The family says they didn’t know about these trips. The police,however,consider this friend’s testimony to be unreliable.

They have also recorded the statement of a Class VII boy who claims to have seen the sisters playing in a lane near the school at 3 pm.

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The general store owner says he distinctly remembers the girls. “They were the only non-convent girls who came with Rs 100 to buy chocolates. Families here don’t give more than Rs 10 to their children for chocolates,” says Maruti Padole.

Their grandmother admits the eldest daughter had surprised them one day by stealing Rs 1,500. She bought an electronic doll for her friend and a few items for her sisters. Among the things the police have seized now are this doll,to track how it was purchased. A number scrolled on a wall in the house is of a teleshopping network,which the eldest one regularly watched.

The grandfather also recalls the 10-year-old once breaking open the lock to their family flour mill with the help of a pair of scissors. He says he never asked her where she learnt the trick,but asked her not to repeat it.

The family is quiet on how the girls got the money they spent on chocolates or on friends. “They told us not to tell anyone,” says the closest friend of the youngest sister.

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Primary investigation indicates that at least one of the girls,perhaps the eldest,knew the assaulters. The well used in the crime is at least 500 m from NH-6 and can’t be seen from the highway. An officer said this meant that somebody needed to have visited the area to know about it. “Sniffer dogs tracked the pathway between the paddy fields as the route used,which leads back to the village,” says Pervez Akbani,33,a villager helping the investigation.

Since a cloth bag (later identified as the family’s grocery bag),stuffed with berries,was found on the border of the well,forensic teams looked for and found a berry tree 200 metres from the spot. Soil samples from the slippers of the girls are also being examined.

The grandmother points out that the youngest sister had started walking only at the age of two and a half years,and still hated walking. The well where the bodies were found was at least 3 km from their school and a long walk through the fields. “It was always a task to get her out of home and send her to school. She hated walking,” she says.

The police are also probing a property angle as the grandparents had willed their house and farm,collectively worth Rs 30 lakh,to the girls. Two maternal uncles are being questioned after the grandparents pointed fingers at them. The police are also probing allegations of the mother suffering constant harassment at the hands of her in-laws and the fights at home.

A Crime Branch team is stationed in a spare room in the girls’ house. Outside,two Home Guards are stationed round the clock.

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Local boys who have attained puberty have all been rounded up and some allegedly beaten up as part of the “investigation”. Nineteen-year-old Manish Raghort was one of them. “I do not know the girls and could not be of any help to them,” he says,showing what he claims are belt marks on his body.

Raghort has now been doing the rounds with the police and taking them to locations. “We have decided to act as informers. We pick leads and give it to them,” says Vinod Bhute.

The police also rounded up some young men after beer bottles were found at the spot. But tests proved that these were remnants of a revelry older than February 14.

Waiters and staff of eateries along NH-6 have also been subjected to questioning. Data has been checked on history sheeters of the past 10 years,while a “paedophile match” has been sought.

Seventeen men were called from Lalwadi village in Tonk district of Rajasthan after a friend of the eldest girl said she had heard a “Rajasthani man” asking the eldest girl to accompany him. “I came with my sarpanch and all my workers. We are cooperating fully,” says Ameen Khan,45,from Rajasthan. Khan has been selling blankets on credit in Lakhni for seven years and says he had come with his relatives to collect debts on January 14. “We went back on February 12 and have nothing to do with the case. The police asked me if I gave any chocolate to any girl while I was here. I was here to collect Rs 3 lakh and for nothing else,” says Khan,who is known to the children as ‘Kallu Mama’.

In the absence of firm evidence,everyone in Murmadi is also doing their own bit of detective work. Suhas Borkar of the ‘Tanta Mukti Community Police’ talks of a cotton swab with liquid on it that he found on March 7. “It could mean a million things,but it could also mean a lead,” says an enthusiastic Borkar,who carries around a small diary with “crime field notings”.

The police have put up white boxes outside schools in the vicinity seeking “anonymous intelligence”.

While over one lakh mobile calls were checked,police said most calls were found to be between “young lovers” as the day the girls disappeared and for which the call detail records were sought happened to be Valentine’s Day.

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At the primary school,the new principal,Ramesh Pardhikar,has put in place more security measures. “We have fenced the place and put checks on the entry and exit of children,” he says. He now has two new schoolteachers.

Back home,the girls’ mother has just returned after being questioned for two days at the police station. While the police are yet to make any statement,for the villagers she remains suspect number one. “Ek do baar toh behosh honi chahiye (She should faint at least once or twice),” is the verdict by Ashok Chole,an ex-gram panchayat member who is also a “community worker”. “She hasn’t shown any grief yet,during the rituals,or when she was informed of her daughters floating in the water,” he says.

His wife Ashwini Chole,also a “community worker”,too has made up her mind. “Imagine washing your house with water a day after your daughters go missing!” she says.

The mother says she knows about these suspicions,but has some of her own. “I want the police to track the people who lured my daughters with money. They did steal,but that was in January. Where did this money (for chocolates etc) come from?” she says.

Talking about her daughters,the mother recalls that the eldest one loved history and would keep clippings of historical characters,her favourite being Rani Laxmi Bai. She loved cooking savoury,was her grandmother’s pet but was a “free bird” and extremely curious. “When she was a toddler,I recall her climbing to the platform of our well,wide-eyed and looking down. I froze,pulled her back quickly,and since then,we have had our well fenced,” she recalls. If the irony strikes her,she doesn’t let it show.

The middle one,she recounts,was a silent observer who did not mingle much. “It wasn’t in her nature to speak,” the mother says,adding that she loved fruits,“berries and all things tangy”,and “treasured her cycle rides”.

Tears finally swell when she speaks of her youngest daughter. “She would come to me and complain about the other two. ‘Mummy,they are stealing money and making me eat chocolates’,she once confessed. She was the most intelligent and would always warn them when they did anything wrong,” the mother says.

A nine-year-old boy from their neighbourhood recalls that the sisters were very tight-knit and also that “they never lost their balance” on their bicycle. “The eldest would sit and the younger one would push,or vice-versa. They had each other’s back,” he recalls.

That’s how the mother remembers them too,the camaraderie,how they would compete with each other while dancing,sometimes just “hopping on the bed,making poses and laughing aloud”.

The three would make fake money out of paper and ask the mother to reward the one who danced the best. “They loved attention. They always loved attention.”