Son alone bats for ‘tyrant old woman’

Geetanjali Gayatri 

Tribune News Service 

Sirsa, July 26

With the burn injuries inflicted by her grandmother nearly healed, a doctor at the local Civil Hospital prepares papers for the discharge of the four-year-old girl from Maujukhera village. She looks dazed, unaware she will return home today. The little girl became the target of fury of her grandmother Kamla Devi. Yearning for a grandson, she burnt her third and youngest granddaughter's body parts with a tong.

Foul-mouthed and ill-tempered, Kamla Devi would publicly humiliate and beat up her daughter-in-law, say neighbours. “She spared nobody, which is why we chose to turn a deaf ear to the cries of her daughter-in-law and her granddaughters. Kamla Devi would dare the neighbours to intervene. This time she went too far and is where she deserves to be (lockup)," says panchayat member Beant Kaur. 

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The family, however, continues to maintain that Kamla Devi is innocent and that the burns are owing to the accidental spilling of tea on the four-year-old. But the villagers claim otherwise. The girl’s father, Mange Ram, couldn’t be bothered about any such talk. He has more pressing matters on his mind, such as putting together enough funds to bail out his mother lodged in the Sirsa jail. 

“I have to get her out. She would run the house. My wife is mentally unstable and can’t work without being supervised. I can’t leave my daughters with her while I go out to earn,” says Mange Ram, who runs an autorickshaw. His frail wife, seven months’ pregnant with her fourth child, does not seem his priority. Two of his daughters are mentally unstable like their mother.  

“Owing to the family’s poor financial health and his wife’s mental condition, Mange Ram is desperate to get his mother back, despite her being a tyrant,” explains Kali, a neighbour. She says Mange Ram had confessed to his mother having inflicted wounds on his daughter with a tong.  The Child Protection Officer has formed a committee of five to ensure the girl’s mother is taken care of till the delivery. But this cannot be a permanent solution, the villagers maintain.

Kamla Devi, speaking to The Tribune after her arrest, had claimed: “I have done no wrong. I have raised  my granddaughters. I am happy having girls in the house.” Doctors say it is difficult to establish the cause of the burns but had tea spilled on the girl there would have been injuries on the legs too. “It is not possible that the tea burnt her private parts alone,” they say.