Will juvenile convict return to his village?
BADAUN: She is 21 and unmarried, a rare status in a western Uttar Pradesh village where girls are married off early in their teens.
She is quiet. Anybody would be in her situation. The woman earns around Rs 50 a day as a farmhand and working in factories near her village, barely making enough to feed a family of six — her bedridden father suffering a mental illness, ailing mother and siblings.
The mother, herself married off at 13, believes their only hope is her 20-year-old son — locked inside a juvenile correctional home in Delhi, over 240 kilometres away.
The son is juvenile convict number 6 of the December 16 gang-rape and murder. He was the most violent of the five convicts but escaped the gallows because of his age.
The boy is set to walk free in a month and the mother, who got the news from villagers, believes he will bring freedom to the family from the daily struggle for survival.
“Before his arrest, he used to send us money and that kept us going. My daughter, unmarried at 21, is a shame here. He should come back and arrange money for her wedding,” she said on Wednesday.
HE WAS THE MOST VIOLENT OF THE FIVE CONVICTS BUT ESCAPED THE GALLOWS BECAUSE OF HIS AGE.
The mother has forgiven her son and wants him back. “The villagers said my son is being released but no one has contacted us. We do not have money to go to Delhi so I have not met him,” she said.
She refused to believe that her son has been radicalised by a fellow juvenile terror convict at the correctional home. “I don’t think he has become a terrorist.”
The convict’s four younger siblings hardly remember how he looks like. He was 11 when he fled home. His youngest brother was only two then. Six years later in December 2012, the family heard about his arrest.
“I dropped out after class 5 last year because we could not afford school. We heard my brother is also educated now. He should come back and take care of us,” said his 10-year-old brother.
Villagers are in two minds, though. Will he return, or should he return? Should they forgive him? Will he take care of his family? Should he be allowed to work in their fields?
Not everyone is willing to forget the past. Village headman and retired schoolteacher Nathu Master said the boy brought disrepute to his native place.
“We haven’t forgiven him but then we won’t stop him from returning either,” said the man who helped the family secure a pucca house from the UP government two months ago. Until then, the family was living inside a tin shed with a tarp roof.
The homecoming won’t be easy. Villagers said he would be under constant watch. “Dare he try anything with the women here? This is not Delhi. He will be lynched and his case will be decided right here,” Nathu Master echoed what’s been on everybody’s mind.