The other mother: Gloom at camp

TNN | Mar 21, 2020, 04.54 AM IST

NEW DELHI: While one mother enjoyed a long-awaited victory, another saw her world collapsing around her. Ram Bai, 80, wailed when she heard news confirming the hanging of her son Mukesh Kumar Singh on Friday morning. She had lost her other son, Ram Singh, who was found dead in jail, possibly due to suicide, a few months after the rape and murder of Nirbhaya in December 2012.

In RK Puram’s Ravidass Camp, home to the Singh brothers, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma, there was a pall of gloom when the bodies arrived in the afternoon. While Gupta’s family stood on the road outside to mourn, the frail Ram Bai sat in a corner of her shanty and grieved alone.

“I was clinging to hope all these years. They could have given Mukesh a life sentence, and I could at least have heard his voice again. But they killed him,” the octogenarian sobbed. The old woman blamed the lengthy litigation for the predicament. “If they had hanged them right after the incident, we wouldn’t hurt so much. But they gave us hope all these years and I spent all the money I had on the legal process. Now he is gone and I am left with nothing. What hope do I have now?” she said.

Gupta’s sisters continued to believe in his innocence, insisting that he was at the local park at the time of the horrifying rape. “When we met him for the last time, he kept hugging us and kept pleading with us to help him,” said the elder sister. “He was innocent and yet we have lost face in society. Who will marry his younger sister now?”

Unlike the crowd at the house of Nirbhaya’s family in Dwarka, there was almost nobody at Ravidass Camp offering condolences to the bereaved families. They only had each other for company. Lawyer A P Singh was present. Gupta’s elder sister visited Ram Bai to see how she was doing. “Has anything changed for women after 2012? Nothing. And this will remain so, no matter how many people you hang,” the sister said defiantly.

In a lane, a carpet had been laid out for the women to mourn together. “Ram, Mukesh, Pawan, Akshay and Vinay were friends though our families didn’t interact with each other much,” the sister disclosed. “After the incident, however, we’ve become close because there’s no one who even looks at us, let alone talks to us or helps ease our pain.”

Gupta’s mother lost consciousness while awaiting his body. She was revived but refused to utter a word, only cried continuously through the day.

The four men — Akshay Thakur’s home is in Bihar — were hanged simultaneously at 5.30am on Friday and their bodies taken for postmortem to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital at 8.30 am. There, the gate to the mortuary was closed and paramilitary personnel posted to prevent any disturbances. Thakur’s family was the first to arrive at the mortuary, followed by the others.

Wearing a purple shirt and chappals, Vinay Sharma’s father arrived with police officers to claim his son’s body. Crying without a stop, he left the mortuary with the body for Ravidass Camp around 1.30pm. Gupta’s family followed him to their residence. The bodies of Singh and Thakur were taken, respectively, to their villages in Rajasthan and Bihar.

(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)