Family lives in penury, woman sent to live with grandparents

CHEK-KAWOOSA The family of a young woman, who was detained by police along with army major Leetul Gogoi on Wednesday, lives in a shed made of tin sheets with windows partially covered with polythene.

Some close relatives and friends huddled in the two-room hut on Friday, which was reflective of penury that the family lives in. Relatives were consoling the family and were urging them to have patience. The woman has been sent to her maternal home. The family refused to talk to HT about the incident despite multiple requests.

“For us, these are testing times. Sometimes it comes in the form of a boy and sometimes in the form of a girl. The only thing we can do is to have patience and seek help from Allah. Please don’t blow this issue out of proportion,” said a man, who claimed to be an uncle to young woman.

Major Gogoi, the woman and a local man were detained by the police after an altercation with the staff of a local hotel in Srinagar on Wednesday. The initial documents presented to police by the woman have revealed that she was not a minor and had come to meet the army officer out of her own will. Gogoi was in news last year after he had tied a Kashmiri civilian in front of his jeep, apparently, in an attempt to prevent stonepelters from targeting his convoy.

Relatives said the woman was studying in Class 10 last year but could not clear the board exams. The woman has three younger siblings; the eldest of whom is in Class 10 but has started working as a labourer. The neighbours were also not very happy about the whole issue and there was anger against the family. A young man told HT that a group of youth hurled few stones towards their shed after news percolated in the neighbourhood on Thursday evening. He said her siblings haven’t come out of the house since the incident.“I don’t know what is the reality but as a father of three girls myself, I know this is the worst thing to happen to a family,” said Mohammad Yousuf, a next door neighbour.

He said, the family lives in a state of penury. While father does labour work, the eldest son of the family, who is around 17, has also started working as labourer, adding, the mother and daughter also used to do some embroidery work at home. “The woman’ father is a very poor man. Earlier, he was working with his brother on a bandsaw mill. Now he does manual labour and is a tree feller,” Yousuf said.

Besides the tin shed, family has erected a plinth for a small concrete house. The bricks and window frames were stacked on the plinth as the structure is yet to come up. Former CM Omar Abdullah released an amount of ₹1.30 lakh for the family to construct the house after he got know about their living conditions.