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The Rediff Special/ Shobha Warrier

'God! I couldn't even see her face one last time'

She sat on the floor, staring vacantly, her dishevelled hair obstructing the tear-stained face.

A man came over with documents for her to sign. She mechanically put pen to paper. The moment she came to know that the signatures were for Rs 200,000 as compensation from the government, her eyes welled with tears.

"Rs 200,000 for my daughter! God! I couldn't even see her face one last time. Did I give birth to her for this?" she sobbed.

Kasi Ammal teaches at a corporation school in Madras. Comprising husband Kesava Chandran, four daughters and a son, hers was a happy family. Till Wednesday.

Her daughters were all good at studies. The eldest, Uma Maheswari, is a research student in microbiology in Madras University. The second, Thripura Sundari, is doing her post-graduation. And Hemalatha was a graduate student in the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.

Was.

Like her eldest sister, she too wanted to research and become an agricultural scientist. But Hemalatha's ambitions were burnt to ashes on February 2 by a group of hooligans. Everything was over in minutes.

War cries filled the air outside the courtroom when Special Court Judge-2 V Radhakrishnan read the verdict on the Pleasant Stay Hotel case.

Former Tamil Nadu chief minister and All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief J Jayalalitha was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for a year and a fine of Rs 1,000. So were four others, including a former minister in her cabinet, T Selvaganapathy, now a member of Parliament.

The AIADMK's response was violent. They blocked traffic at many places, stopped government buses, not only within Madras, but in other parts of Tamil Nadu too.

In Dharmapuri, it went a step ahead. A group, allegedly of the AIADMK, stopped a bus carrying 70 students of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, and set fire to it.

The students were returning to Coimbatore after a study tour. They were forced out of the bus through the front door; the back door was locked. But before Hemalatha, Gayathri and Kokila could get out, one of the mob locked the front door from the outside.

Even as other students and teachers cried out that there were people inside, a miscreant threw a petrol bomb.

The whole bus burst into flames. And three young girls were charred to death.

"We couldn't even see her face," Kesava Chandran, her father, choked.

It was he who had left Hemalatha in the hostel three months ago. She was planning to return this week. But instead, her charred body came back.

"What did my daughter do? Why do they have to punish innocent people?" Chandran asked. "She [Jayalalitha] was not even arrested or taken to jail. If this is the way her men behave on hearing a court verdict, I don't know what will happen later."

Chandran, an Indian Bank employee, came out from work in the evening to find no vehicles on the road. He was surprised. He had heard about the court verdict and the violent reactions, but little did he know that a mob had turned its fury on his daughter.

By night, he got a message from Dharmapuri that the college bus had met with an accident and his daughter was in the hospital.

"I am not a member or supporter of any political party, but I work for the welfare of my community, the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. I have heard of miscreants setting fire to transport buses. But till now they did it only after emptying the bus. Here, even when they knew that some girls were inside, they did it!" Chandran still can't believe it.

"As it was the university bus, they looked at it as the government's. I do not know which party people did this. Whoever it is, we are the sufferers, are we not? We lost our daughter. It was very, very cruel. That's all I can say."

He continued: "My daughter wanted to be an agricultural scientist and do research. So the country has also lost a young scientist. Three young lives are gone. They will not come back. What did they gain out of this? My heart breaks whenever the image of her smiling face appears in front of me. We could not even see her face..."

While returning home with his daughter's body, Chandran saw thousands of students on the streets, protesting. "They did not belong to either the AIADMK or DMK. They were merely angry students. The political scene has become so dirty that I feel we need a change. All these people and parties should go and a new set of leaders should come up. Only then will our youngsters have a better future.

"If those in power do not stop such heinous acts, these parties will disappear. If political parties are going to behave like this, students will rise and rise from the ashes of these girls," he said.

Hemalatha's uncle, who had been listening to the conversation, added: "The boy who tried to help Hema and the other girls told me that the hooligans refused to listen to their pleas. If they had not locked the door, the girls would have escaped.

"She [Jayalalitha] says they are not AIADMK men. But tell me who went berserk that day after hearing the verdict? Her party workers. So it is anybody's guess who they were... Whoever they are, the loss is ours."

By then it was time for Chandran to go to the crematorium. To collect his daughter's ashes. As he got up, tears rolled down.

The flow of well-wishers had not subsided when he returned. The house was still crowded with people: students from nearby colleges, friends of Hemalatha and her sisters, students from Kasi Ammal's school, Chandran's colleagues and the entire neighbourhood.

Meanwhile, the political scene in Tamil Nadu has taken a turn for the worse. The AIADMK and DMK accuse each other of trying to gain political mileage from the incident. You could see posters condemning Hemalatha's killers on the walls, obviously pasted by the AIADMK's detractors.

"What do they think? That they will be able to get away with this? No, the students will not let them," some in the emotionally charged crowd fumed.

"A change is going to take place. Please write in detail about this gruesome incident. Let the whole world know how our political parties behave."

The Rediff Specials

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