In the winter of 2012, Asha Devi, 47, left Mumbai for her native village in Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur district with her ailing husband, Rajendra Prasad Gautam, and seven children. Whatever little the couple had saved from their meagre earnings while working as mason and labourer at construction sites over the years, was soon exhausted on Gautam’s healthcare. They did manage to build a hut on a small plot of land given by Gautam’s brothers at Bari Ahiroli village. But barely four months after their return, Gautam lost the battle against tuberculosis, leaving her to face life’s struggles alone.
In the ensuing years, Devi withstood many upheavals, clinging to hope. She did menial jobs and toiled away at village farms all through the day, while her eldest daughter, Renu, who was only 13 then, looked after the kids at home. But in spite of her back-breaking labour, the Dalit family continued to live in penury. Four years ago, a botched cataract surgery at a charity medical camp left her blind in both eyes. In 2019, one of her daughters, aged 23, died of hypothermia.
As if the world of Asha Devi wasn’t dark enough, her three teenage daughters—Preeti, 17, Arti, 15, and Kajal, 12—were found dead, their body parts scattered on a railway track, at least 14 kms from their house, on the intervening night of November 18-19. Villagers, local police and some news reports claimed the girls were driven to “mass-suicide” to escape acute poverty and starvation. Asha Devi, however, refuses to believe this theory. “They could never have taken this step. My daughters were brave and swabhimaani (self-respecting). They would eat whatever was available at home and never borrow even salt from anyone,” Devi told Outlook, sitting on a worn-out charpoy at her home. While speaking, she was inconsolable and broke down several times. Asha Devi has two more daughters. One of them, Jyoti, 21, lives with her late father’s sister in a nearby village and the other, Renu was married off in July this year.
The basti in which Asha Devi lives is a cluster of dank, dark and cramped huts, barring the exceptions of a few incomplete concrete structures, inhabited by Dalits. It represents a gut-wrenching picture of human lives held hostage by economic deprivations and misgovernance in the rural hinterland. Government welfare schemes don’t seem to have made any difference to the life of the needy and deserving people here. Their benefits have been distributed as determined and dictated by a combination of factors such as administrative inertia, corruption and caste considerations. Mostly illiterate, the landless and destitute villagers seemingly remain occupied with only one purpose and challenge in their daily struggle for survival—arranging the next meal.
State of affairs
Incidentally, Uttar Pradesh is the third poorest state in India with nearly 38 per cent of its total population living in chronic poverty, according to the Niti Aayog’s recently-released first Multidimensional Poverty Index report. Notwithstanding tall official claims regarding distribution of subsidised ration to the poor and the success rate of welfare schemes, the relief promised under poverty mitigation programmes remains elusive for the impoverished residents of Dalit Basti. Entries in Asha Devi’s ration card and her immediate neighbours corroborated allegations that the residents hadn’t received subsidised ration after August 2021.
Portraits of grief (From left) Ganesh, the brother of the three dead sisters; their mother Asha Devi, and elder sister Renu at their house in Bari Ahiroli.
Shriram Verma, the kotedar, a shopkeeper licensed to sell subsidised rations, said, “It becomes difficult to make entries on every ration card during the rush hours as I handle everything single-handedly. So I just take thumb impressions while distributing ration.” Asserting that ration cardholders have been getting regular supply, Verma clarified, “Only those villagers who have an Aadhaar card are entitled to subsidised ration.” The villagers also complained that most of the poor families didn’t have Below Poverty Line (BPL) ration cards. And those families that had Above Poverty Line (APL) ration cards, they said, the names of some members had been omitted.
An old widow, Anara broke down and started crying, describing her economic problems. Her only son passed away on October 6 this year. His widow, who is barely in her mid-twenties, lives in a small hut that doesn’t even have a door. She too has been striving for a BPL card for her three daughters. “If a social audit is conducted in our village, 80 per cent of the beneficiaries of government schemes and BPL ration card holders would turn out to be non-deserving,” alleged Ankit Kumar Singh, a local resident and son of a former village head.
On the incomplete dwelling units allotted under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) in the Basti, Rakesh Patel, the village Pradhan, said, “The beneficiaries have received the money promised under the scheme. But they have spent it elsewhere.” Patel, who became village head six months ago, said that he has brought the discrepancies in ration cards to the notice of the food and civil supplies department. “We have requested the department to enhance the quota of monthly ration supply for the panchayat,” he added, admitting that the family of deceased girls didn’t have an Antyodaya ration card. He also concurred with villagers that wages were long overdue to local workers who were engaged under MGNREGA.
Near the house of Asha Devi, a middle-aged woman, Jyoti Devi, lives with her teenage disabled son who has survived polio. A beneficiary of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, she showed her cooking gas cylinder, which she said was empty for the last over four months. She took the reporter round the Basti, showing dry cow-dung cakes, which the villagers use for cooking purposes. “There are times when we don’t find even a single grain at our home. We have to sleep on an empty stomach. At present, we have two sacks of paddy seeds. We manually thrash them and cook rice for meals. Occasionally, we get the supply ration. This is how we survive,” said Devi, who is a BPL card holder, alleging that the names of only five family members have been written on the card instead of nine. Just like Asha Devi, she too got a dwelling under PMAY. While Asha’s incomplete housing unit doesn’t have a roof, the incomplete concrete structure built in Jyoti’s name near her hut hardly resembles a house.
Other than one or two bags of rice or wheat, residents of the Dalit Basti hardly have any other possessions in their shanties. Referring to Asha Devi’s plight, Ram Dular, 70, another resident said, “The condition of the entire basti is the same. As we don’t own agricultural land or any other assets, we are always in need of food rations. Our boys go to cities in far-off places to make a living and feed others at home. During the corona pandemic most of them had to return home.”
All that remains (left) A slipper lies by the side of the railway track where the mutilated bodies of the three sisters were found; and Dalit women of the village.
Too little, too late
Soon after the tragedy of the three girls was reported, several political leaders from various parties started visiting the girls’ family. Help in the form of food-rations, financial assistance and benefits of government welfare schemes started pouring in. A day after the girls were cremated, the family said, the village head provided them with a refilled cooking gas cylinder. They had received the LPG connection under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana. The kotedar also provided them two bags of rice and wheat, weighing 50 kg each, along with 3 kg dal, 2 litres mustard oil, one kg besan, 5 kg potatoes and spices.
On November 23, a police team led by the local DSP visited the family to ensure they had enough to eat. A little later, a team of medical staff visited the house and administered the first dose of corona vaccine to all members of the family. The local administration has decided to provide two patches of “agricultural land” measuring around 0.75 acre to the family. Ironically, one plot is wetland and the other is arid and rocky. Since the promised pieces of land are surrounded by the farms of the Thakur community, the family rued, it was almost impossible for him to take possession and cultivate it because of caste tensions in the area.
Ramesh Chandra Mishra, the local MLA, also promised to complete construction of the housing unit provided under PMAY. Within hours, the required construction material that included sand, six cement bags, 48 stone slabs and five iron beams was dumped near Devi’s hut. While the family already has two water handpumps installed in their courtyard, the legislator gave them one more.
The irony is not lost on Devi. A few months ago, her hut got an electricity connection. “I told them to complete our house first and then give us power connection. No one paid heed,” she said, pointing towards an electric meter on the front mud wall of her humble house. “For years, I kept pursuing officials for a BPL card...But now, when my daughters are gone, everyone wants to help me,” Devi added.
Amid the rush to help the family, the lone brother of the girls, Ganesh, 19, recalled the hardship and humiliation he faced to complete the legal and last rites of his sisters. Because of their caste, the aggrieved family members and relatives alleged, they were subjected to humiliation at every step—from post-mortem, transportation of the body bags, to the cremation of the three bodies on a single pyre.
Recalling their horrific experience at the Jaunpur district hospital’s mortuary, Mahendra, an uncle of the deceased girls, said, “Those who conducted the post-mortem kept delaying it. On sensing that we didn’t have money, a policeman gave me a few hundred rupees and asked me to request them with folded hands. I did so and apologised to them for being poor. And finally, the matter settled on four bottles of hooch (local illicit liquor) and Rs 600,” he told Outlook.
Crematorium workers too initially asked for Rs 5,000 for each pyre and Rs 1,500 extra to burn the bodies. But Ganesh said he had money only for one pyre. It was only after much pleading that the caretakers allowed Ganesh to burn the three bodies—what was left of them—all in a single pyre. Like in life, there was no dignity left for the girls in death too.
Unanswered questions
Till Sunday, November 28, the police hadn’t registered an FIR in the case. The police picked up a boy from the Basti, who would allegedly talk to Preeti, the eldest of the three girls, over the phone. When Badlapur police reportedly reached the railway track, his name was flashing on the phone screen that was lying near Preeti’s mutilated body. Police let him go after a few hours of questioning. He works as a labourer in a factory in Delhi and had come home nearly two weeks ago.
“The post-mortem report stated that the deaths occurred when the girls got crushed after coming in front of a train (03257 Jansadharan Express which was on way to Delhi from Danapur, Bihar) that was passing through. We didn’t recover any suicide note from the spot,” a senior police officer at Badlapur told Outlook on the condition of anonymity, saying he was not authorised to discuss the matter with the media. “The reasons behind the suicide have to be investigated by the Maharajganj police station as the village of deceased girls comes under the jurisdiction of that police station,” the police officer maintained. At Maharajganj police station, however, a sub-inspector said that the incident was to be probed by the Badlapur police instead as the incident took place in an area that falls in their jurisdiction. “We haven’t registered an FIR as the family didn’t ask for it,” the police officer at the Badlapur police station said.
Ramesh Kumar Gautam, a local activist of the Bhim Army, and the brother of the girls, Ganesh called out the police claims, asserting, “On November 24, our deputation visited the Badlapur police station. We submitted an application, requesting a thorough investigation into the matter so that it could become clear whether it was a mass suicide or murder. There is a stronger likelihood of a crime involved in these deaths. But the police have not registered our complaint so far.”
As the grief-stricken family refused to buy the mass-suicide theory, they wondered why the girls chose to end their lives at a place about 14 kms from their house. “It is a subject of doubt that a single thought kept playing on the minds of all three girls while they were lying on the railway tracks. At least one of them could have got frightened and ran away on hearing the rumble of a train approaching them,” said Virendra Pratap, 34, a close relative.
Renu and Jyoti showed the groceries stacked in one portion of the hut. They also pulled out brand new sandals and shoes from a packet, asserting the family wasn’t facing any financial distress. The brother spoke about a smartphone that he claimed Preeti had gifted him a few months ago. However, he didn’t have pictures of any of his sisters on his phone.
A few days before they disappeared, the girls would spend several hours uprooting tree stumps near the village border and bringing them home to ensure they had enough firewood to cook and keep their house warm this winter. Pointing towards the stack of stumps, their eldest sister Renu asked, “Why would they stock this wood if they were thinking of suicide?” Before leaving the house on November 18 evening, Asha Devi interjected, “they had cooked ‘mooli ki sabzi’ and baked rotis for everyone at home.”
Maintaining that the girls usually travelled on their bicycle, a family member said, “That evening, they didn’t take the bicycle along. And this is hard to believe that the girls reached the Fattupur railway crossing on Sultanpur rail section on foot during pitch dark hours as all the means of public transportation go off the road by then.”
For the grieving family, many questions remain unanswered. But they are not sure if they will get answer to any of them.
By Ashutosh Sharma in Jaunpur
