The death penalty to the four accused in the Nirbhaya gangrape case has been welcomed by all. But, when it comes to the families of the victim as also the accused, the pain has been on both sides of the spectrum. If Nirbhaya’s mother says what happened to her daughter will kill her too, mothers of the accused say they have the added burden of living with the taint of their sons’ sins. DEEBASHREE Mohanty and Sangeeta Yadav speak to all the families to bring you a report on how there can seldom be a closure in such cases

• In a plush newsroom of a popular channel in Noida, Asha Devi sits quietly in a corner listening intently to all that is being said about her daughter, victim of the brutal December 16 gangrape. “Can you even imagine how hapless a mother feels when her only daughter who is in extreme pain recounts how she was brutalised by six menIJ,” she asks as tears roll down unchecked. It’s been exactly nine months to that fateful night and Asha insists she has been dying a slow death eversince, the verdict notwithstanding.“My daughter died in maximum pain — physically torn apart and mentally bruised. She was embarrassed that she was raped in the most beastly manner possible. But she gathered courage to tell me all the torturous details of that night. How they beat her to pulp, how they bit off her nipples, inserted a rod into her and violated her sexually before throwing her out of the bus naked. Do you think any mother can live with such graphic details of what some beasts did to her daughterIJ Do you think I will ever forget how she struggled to speak and in sign language showed me how those men took turns to rape herIJ They have been punished for raping and murdering my daughter, but what about meIJ They have condemned me for life,” Asha says, sobbing silently.
• A few km away, at the now infamous Ravi Dass camp near RK Puram from where most of the accused come, another mother is in a different kind of pain. Besides carrying the cross of being a rapist’s mother, she has to also deal with the fact that she has lost a son to his misdeeds. Champa Devi sports a composed demeanour but her anguish peeps out nevertheless. Her only son Vinay Sharma is to be hanged till death. “I am a mother, my heart wants to believe my son is not involved. Two of my girls are of marriageable age. No one will marry them,” she says asking you frantically how she is supposed to cope with the loss of her only son.
  
• Pawan’s family members, meanwhile, have been so embarrassed by his doing that they creep out of their house in the wee hours and creep back past midnight when everyone is asleep. Pawan’s elder sister died this February due to a chronic ailment though her younger sibling insists that she could not digest what her brother did. Pawan’s mother, neighbours tell you, has not uttered a word ever since.
  
• Another mile from this camp, lives Kalyani Singh, mother of the now deceased Ram Singh and Mukesh who has been given the death sentence. She has been the most vocal of them all. “What’s the point of us livingIJ We’ve been ostracised, we are treated as criminals. My upbringing has been questioned but I did everything I could to give my sons a decent life. What wrong have I doneIJ” she asks you.
  
• In lahankarma in Aurangabad, Punita Devi is unable to come to terms with the happening. She believes her husband Akshay Thakur was a docile man who was turned into a brute by the senseless city of Delhi where he came for work. “What am I going to tell my sons when they grow up and ask me how their father diedIJ Can I live with the knowledge that my husband was such an animal,” she asks.
  
• In Gorakhpur, Avaindra Pratap Pandey is glued to his TV set tracking the judgement. He still lives in perpetual fear. “I feel terrible I couldn’t save Nirbhaya. These are beasts. It is not a closure for me. Nothing ever will be,” he says.
  

Pain, anguish, despair, fear, shame, denial — emotions around the December 16 gangrape case are myriad and on both sides of the spectrum. One senseless act of mindless violence by sub-human men and a mass graveyard for all their families. Nirbhaya died a torturous death but her parents and siblings continue to live in agony, scarred for life. The accused will be hanged but their families have been tainted for life.

While Nirbhaya’s (her father insists she be called by her real name and not Nirbhaya or ‘gangrape victim’) parents are happy with the death penalty, they say the court journey has been a torment. “listening to all the details about Nirbhaya’s brutalisation was unbearable,” but Badrinath Singh, says all the trips from Balia to the Saket Court, in a way, helped them cope with their distress as it helped them pass time. “But now that the judgement is given I wonder how we will find something else to keep our grief at bay,” he says.

Badrinath is calmer than his wife who is just a shadow of her former self and often recalls aloud how on that night of tragedy she was happily laying the meals for the family when her daughter was being raped and killed. “What are these congratulatory messages all aboutIJ We haven’t won a game or a match. Yes, it is justice delivered but I would have preferred that December 16 had not happened at all. I lost my daughter, and in the most horrifying manner. I cannot ever forget that, I will take it to my grave,” she says, wiping her tears with the pallu of her yellow saree which was a gift from her daughter just weeks before the incident. 

“It was her gift. She was never happy with the clothes I wore. She wanted me to wear bright colours which was not my style. But today (judgement day), I wanted to wear this,” she says. It was Nirbhaya’s dying wish that her tormentors got the severest punishment. “She could barely speak those days but with gestures and in broken sentences she said she wanted them to die and burn in hell. She would ask me why this had to happen to her,” Asha recalls. “She was very weak but vividly remembered everything that had happened to her,” she adds.

Asha says no mother should ever see her children die like Nirbhaya. “My daughter was physically and mentally tortured, scared and deep down ashamed of her plight. Imagine a girl describing to her mother and brothers how she was violated. At first she would only cry, too embarrassed to give the details. But later, when she did open up in front of me, it was like some torrent had been unleashed. She went into the minutest details. I didn’t want to hear them. But for my daughter’s sake, I did. I heard how six crazed men had brutalised her,” Asha recalls yet again unable to control her tears.

In her anguish, she stares you down when you ask if she had any idea how the accused’s families are paying for the sins of their sons. “They are paying for what their sons did but what am I paying for,” she asks straight away.

Back at the Ravi Dass Camp on the eve of the quantum of punishment in the case, one could sense indifference and pain in equal measure. This slum nestles between the poorest of colonies in RK Puram. Girls sport jeans and tees, speak decent angrezi and are unafraid of voicing their opinion. In the gallis, an unbearable stench of unwashed clothes and utensils assails you. Sitting amid a heap of clothes is a 35-year-old woman — Champa Devi, mother of accused Vinay Sharma. Robot-like, she gestures you on to a dirty footstool. She has been sitting outside her 6 by 6 room all day. “Ab kya rakkha hai humare liye. Vinay was our breadwinner. With him gone, I have no idea how to continue,” she says. She, too, has tears in her eyes but is frank to admit that the sympathies have never been with her family.

“People always wanted him to be hanged. They have no idea what that means for a mother. No one cares about this mother. It’s all about Nirbhaya what her parents are facing. As a mother, how are my feelings any different from her’s. She lost her child to a gruesome incident. I’ve lost mine too,” Devi argues.

When Vinay was picked up for the gangrape and murder Champa Devi had fainted in shock. “I couldn’t believe my Vinay was involved. I wanted to die, disappear. But I had to fend for my children. Vinay told me he was not involved. As a mother, I believe him,” she says.

People have not stopped staring her down and whispering to her face ever since the trial began. She has two daughters. One studies at a Government school near RK Puram and needs a face surgery her parents can’t afford. She accidentally fell on a gas stove and got 90 per cent burns on the left side of her face and neck. “Now that Vinay is all but gone, I don’t know think we can ever afford a rectification surgery. She is 15. No one will marry her. No one will marry her elder sister too, thanks to this incident,” Champa Devi says. She carries a mobile and tells you how she has been interviewed over 70 times.

She is aware most people feel she is a mother in denial of her son’s sin but that does not stop her from peddling his innocence. “Do I have a choiceIJ I have to fight for my child,” she says agitatedly. But wasn’t Vinay party to the horrific crimeIJ “Then what we are going through is not enough. God will punish us in the most horrifying manner. And I would have no regrets to see my son hanging,” she says. Her tone changes from indignation to rigidity the next instant. “As a mother I believe my son is innocent. Baki to sab bhagwan par hai,” she says.

Just three houses away, there is a 13-year-old staring out of her shanty. She is not scared of visitors but prefers to be stuck to the TV. Savdhaan India is Sheetal’s favourite programme and her brother Pawan Gupta (accused), her favourite sibling. “My parents say bhaiyya couldn’t have been a part of the gangrape. But I don’t know. I wish people left us alone,” she says, not wanting to tell where her parents are.

According to Bhishm Singh who owns a kiosk in the slum, Pawan’s parents who are fruit vendors are just too ashamed to be seen around the area in daylight and spend most of their time in the mandi. “They sneak in at night to sleep and are leave at crack of dawn. Their eldest daughter died in February due to heart attack. The family is torn apart after the incident. They find it difficult to face people,” Singh says.

Pawan’s parents have found it easier to isolate themselves. They’ve not been to the court much and unlike Pawan’s mother who was aware of the crime even before the police got to the accused, are too shocked by their son’s involvement.

“My mother doesn’t go to court because she doesn’t keep well and doesn’t want to meet anyone,” Sheetal says.

Same is the case with Ram Singh’s parents. After their eldest son Ram Singh, (prime accused) committed suicide in jail, the family moved out of this slum. “It was difficult to bring Ram up in an unfriendly environment. His father was never there and would not contribute to the family. The onus of bringing him up was solely on me. I took all kinds of odd jobs to feed him. I would bring both Ram and Mukesh with me to the construction site when he was only 20 days old. My sons have had a painful past. So have I. I have dedicated 15 years of my life to bring them up single-handed. Now, Ram is dead and Mukesh is about to be hanged. It is a void that no one can fill. They were guilty and they got punished. But what have I done to lose both my sons,” Kalyani Devi asks plainly on phone from an unannounced location in South Delhi.

Kalyani and her husband Mange lal were forced to leave the slum because people started calling them names. “We had to shift. Had we continued there, I would have had to commit suicide,” Kalyani says. They now live with their youngest son Suresh.

Kalyani had remarried after her first husband left her. She has a son Raju from him. Raju, too, is a criminal. He lives fours houses away from Ram Singh’s two-bedroom house but the story in his shanty is different. His wife is quite happy that Mukesh will be hanged. A maid at a kothi in RK Puram, she distributed sweets the day Ram hung himself in Tihar jail.

That’s the story of Ravi Dass camp. Far away from the Capital, there is yet another family living through hell, again thanks to their son’s misdeed. In lahankarma in Aurangabad district Akshay Thakur’s father Saryu Singh has been living in shame.

“I am ashamed of what my son has done. He deserves more severe punishment. But he used to be a simple man when he was here. Once he went to Delhi for work, the city turned him into a beast,” he says. This small time farmer’s wife Malti Devi is in a state of shock and Akshay’s wife Punita Devi walks head down through the lanes of her village where people talk of her husband.

“She fasted this teej. She has lost 13 kg since the trial began. She keeps crying and has been hoping against hope that her husband and the father of her two children did not do it,” Singh says. Punita doesn’t want to be known as Akshay’s wife.

While shame and pain is what most parents of the accused feel, there is one family which is living in perpetual fear.  Avaindra Pratap Pandey, Nirbhaya’s boyfriend and the sole eyewitness to the incident, had been in immense fear till the death penalty was given.

“It’s been nine months but I can’t get that sight out of my mind. I wish I had died too. My parents wonder if I will ever be able normal again. They fear the accused will get back at me. Their faces haunt me. They should be hanged as early as tomorrow,” he says.