Neelam Katara wins a six-year battle for justice for the murder of her son, Nitish Katara. Despite the political connections and wealth of the guilty, Vikas and Vishal Yadav (who, according to a court verdict murdered Nitish six years ago because they disapproved of his relationship with Vikas’s sister, Bharti Yadav), Neelam fought a long and often lonely battle.
The Times of India traces the story of how the veil was lifted and fear was conquered for the truth.
Though Bharti Yadav successfully hid behind a veil in public when she came for her court deposition in 2006, she helped the trial court unveil the motive which led to the conviction of her brothers in the Nitish Katara murder case on Wednesday.
It was Bharti’s two day in-camera testimony, during which Vikas refused to come to court on the ground of illness, that convinced additional sessions judge Ravinder Kaur that her family was aware of her relationship with Nitish. “He knew of the relationship and had no courage to face Bharti for his misdeeds,” observed ASJ Kaur, refusing to believe Bharti’s claim that though she was “very close” to Nitish, her family didn’t know anything and so Vikas and Vishal couldn’t have been enraged about the affair.
And for another profile in courage, Teresa Rehman in Tehelka speaks to Laishram Gyaneswari, one of the 12 Manipuri mothers who stripped in order to shame the Indian army
IT’S EARLY HOURS on Imphal’s Nagamapal Road. Fateh Chand Jain, proprietor of the Indo-Myanmar Furniture Shop, is unlocking its wooden shutters. He deflects enquiries about his wife, Ima Laishram Gyaneswari, with a self-effacing wave: “You put your questions to her. I don’t interfere in her matters.” But press him a little more and he speaks with pride of how this 56-year-old Meitei homemaker joined a dozen Manipuri imas, mothers, on July 15, 2004, to lay storm to the Assam Rifles headquarters at Kangla Fort. Stripping naked, they thronged the gates, screaming their outrage at the rape and alleged custodial murder of Thangjam Manorama, a 32-year-old suspected member of the banned People’s Liberation Army. Jain recalls how he didn’t even know what his wife had left the house for that day; it was only in the afternoon that he got to know of the imas’ unprecedented act of protest. “I had an inkling my wife might be involved. She had touched my feet before she left the house, something she usually does when she leaves for something important. But this time she didn’t tell me where she was going.”
Similar Posts:
- Mrs Prime Minister
- Forced marriages: the trail of misery and fear in Britain
- 14 years later, godman gets life term for killing his wife
- Godmen or fraudmen?
- Aarushi murder: It wasn’t the dad
0 Responses to “Mothers of courage”
Leave a Reply