‘Haven’t told wife what our child faced during those 5 days’
JAMMU: The mother of an eightyear-old girl raped and murdered in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua does not know about the “brutalities” inflicted on her daughter and has been on heavy doses of anti-depressants since the body was found in January.
After the discovery of the body, the girl’s family and her foster parents have already left for the upper reaches of Sanasar in Patnitop, nearly a month ahead of their annual trek in search of greener pastures for their livestock. The minor belonged to the nomadic Bakarwal community, which rears horses, sheep and goats and moves uphill from the plains in Jammu in the summers.
“Till date, I have not told my wife about the brutalities unleashed upon our eight-yearold daughter. She is on heavy doses of anti-depressants since January 17, the day when she saw the badly mutilated body of our daughter,” the 40-year-old father of the minor said in a phone interview from Sanasar, about 150 km from Kathua. Police have arrested eight people for the crime. According to the charge sheet, the girl was kidnapped on January 10, held captive in a temple, sedated and subjected to multiple sexual assaults .
The father said they had gifted the girl to his brother-in-law and wife after they lost three sons and a daughter in a road accident in Mansar few years ago. “To bring them out of pain and agony, I and my wife decided to give our youngest daughter to them and we did so when she was barely one-year-old,” said the father.
“Her foster parents are shattered again,” he said.
Police say that the accused had planned the girl’s abduction to terrorise the Bakarwals into leaving Rassana, a Hindu-dominated area. “We had no enmity with anyone in Rassana and if our horses had ever damaged crops of someone in the area, they should have avenged the loss by killing me or my horses but why did they kill our daughter,” the father said. The biological father said that he and his family were devastated by the loss of their daughter, the youngest among four siblings. The family has a son and two other daughters.
“Those who starved, sedated, gang-raped, gave electrical shocks and then brutally murdered my minor daughter should be hanged publicly so that the punishment acts as a deterrent and no other child has to face what my child has faced,” he said, recalling how she used to jump into his lap whenever he and his wife visited her foster father’s home. He said he is sorry that instead of seeking justice for his daughter, some communal forces are trying to make it a Hindu versus Muslim issue.
“I have lost my daughter and my brother-in-law and his wife and my family are shattered souls again. This gory incident should not be given a communal colour. Seek justice for my child,” he said.