LIFE is once again shaking hands with Ram Shri now. Exactly eight months ago, on March 14, she was escorted out of the Lucknow Nari Bandi Niketan and transported to Mathura where gallows awaited her arrival. But this 14th day of November was quite different. Ram Shri once again stepped out of the Nari Bandi Niketan but for an entirely different reason. This time it was for a pleasant brush with normal life. A trip to the zoo.
Ever since the Supreme Court commuted her death sentence to life imprisonment, life, it seems, has really been returned to Ram Shri. From the puffy-eyed, frail figure that moved into the police van eight months ago—when she could utter no more than, "Hamaar bitiya ko bacha lena (Save my daughter)," Ram Shri cannot spend enough time with three-year-old Puja. And now she wants to find her son Ramchand and husband Khoobchand who have practically abandoned her. "Jaisi karni, vaisi bharni (as you sow, so you reap)," her husband had said while she was incarcerated at Mathura jail awaiting the hanging.
"She is a very emotional and warm person, quite in contrast to the crime for which she has been sentenced," says Lucknow jail superintendent Suresh Chandra. Ram Shri stands out even in a crowd of convicts. Clad in a white sari like all inmates, she follows each instruction carefully and responds to the roll-call before leaving for the zoo. Instead of cursing her fate, she can only say: "Hum to saari zindagi aap sab logon ko dua denge, hamare paas dene ke liye kuch aur to nahin hai (All my life, I will remain obliged to you)." She cannot stop thanking those who swerved her away from the gibbet.
But it will take Ram Shri a while before she can completely get over her horror. According to Uma Rani, deputy jailer, Nari Bandi Niketan, she has gradually started coming out of her shock. She recounts her week of tribulations when preparations had begun for her hanging. "My nightmares triggered off when they started giving me the special diet in the first week of March," she told Outlook. She only had a vague idea about this special 'treatment', that too through an inmate friend of hers. In a couple of days she realised that her journey towards death's dark alley had begun.
That journey had begun when the Agra Express had halted at the Mathura station on March 15 and Ram Shri was taken to the Mathura jail. Here she was confined to the 'isolation chamber', meant specially for those under capital punishment. While she sat lost in the maze of her innumerable sorrows, arrangements for reconstructing the gallows, not used for more than 50 years, started in full swing. Kallu Jallad, the hangman, was summoned as soon as the death warrant signed by the Allahabad High Court reached the jail. As the official terminator of UP prisons, Kallu was also the executioner of Beant Singh, who assassinated Indira Gandhi.
As the hours ticked by, Ram Shri wondered how her 18-month-old daughter would face life without her mother. She hoped her husband would pay her a visit before Kallu tightened the noose around her delicate neck. Immersed deep in her misery, little did she know that her cause was being taken up in the outside world. As soon as a national daily flashed the news—'High Court sends woman to gallows'—lawyers and women's organisations took up cudgels on her behalf. The high court had fixed the hanging of Ram Shri, along with that of her father and brother, after their conviction in a case of murder of her relatives. Ram Shri's death warrant was signed for April 6, 1998. The Supreme Court, however, stayed her hanging on March 20 and finally on August 26 commuted her sentence to life imprisonment.
As soon as the Supreme Court's order reached Mathura jail on September 3, Ram Shri's transfer letter for Luck-now jail was prepared and she started for the only exclusive prison for women in the country. On her arrival, her friends and the khaki-clad all welcomed Ram Shri with open arms. While her little daughter ran to familiar arms, the lady convict hugged the warden and others and sobbed uncontrollably. "It was too difficult for her to believe she was still alive," recalls Uma Rani. Back in Mathura, jailer B.S. Mucund remembers how well-behaved Ram Shri was. "Woh bahut achchi thi (she was very nice)," he says. According to him, Ram Shri felt secure believing that the Mathura jail had brought her good luck.
Now that she's back in Lucknow, Ram Shri continues to wait for her husband and son, according to jailer L.M. Pandey. Meanwhile, Jawaharlal Nehru's birth anniversary was an occasion to celebrate. On that day she was out in the open for a stretch of four hours with 19 other inmates. Her daughter missed the visit to the zoo as she was taken ill. But for mother Ram Shri it was a taste of freedom she had been denied for long. She was thrilled at the sight of peacocks and parrots; gazed in disbelief at the lions, tigers and the one-horned rhino and clapped gleefully when the gibbon (hukku bandar) called out.
Memory returns to haunt as soon as the group sits down to rest a while. Tears well up and she appears lost. Asked what's wrong, the 37-year-old woman from UP's Mahoba district starts confiding. "The dark cell, the fear of the gallows and the sudden change of fate have confused her enough for her to say—"Kabhi kabhi hamein kuch samajh mein nahin aata (At times I fail to understand a thing)." She begins to wonder where her brother and father are. "Pata nahin hamare pati humse ab tak milne kyon nahin aaye, ab to hamain woh maaf kar denge (I wonder why my husband hasn't yet come to pay me a visit, I am sure that even he would forgive me now)?" Ram Shri has written two letters to him since she has returned to Lucknow. She continues to hope that her 10-year-old son is comfortable and well looked after.
Back in the confines, with Puja in her arms, Ram Shri knows she'll have to wait patiently for being with her son again. Her brief four hours of freedom in the zoo are over. The huge iron gates are firmly back in place with Ram Shri behind them. For her, these gates will finally open only in the year 2010.
