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Zubeida, Delhi, mother of Noor - A mother’s struggle for justice

My daughter Noor was married to Nayeem. At the time of marriage, as is usually the custom, we gave dowry to the groom’s family. Soon, he started demanding more articles such as a motorcycle and a colour TV from us. These demands often turned violent. We are quite poor and did not have the money to meet all his demands; we told Nayeem's family that this was not possible. Nayeem continued his brutal abuse against my Noor. Unable to stand this torture, she came back to our home in Delhi.

Nayeem however, followed Noor to Delhi and promised to reform himself. She went back to the village and lived with him for three months. Then one evening, Noor was tied to a rope bed with thick ropes, a cloth was stuffed into her mouth to prevent her screams from being heard, and she was given electric shocks. As a result of this trauma, she suffocated and died. In order to make it look like suicide, they left her body by the railway tracks.

We have many relatives who live in a nearby village, and they informed me about Noor's death. On hearing this news, we rushed to Ganganagar. Noor’s in-laws had wrapped her body and taken her to be buried before we reached there. Noor’s grandmother (my mother-in-law) held on to the doli and refused to let it go till I reached there. She was shocked to see that there was a cloth inside Noor's mouth (the family was unable to pull it out). Two of her front teeth were broken, her head had been split open and there was a lot of clotted blood on her body. When I reached the graveyard, I realized what had happened. Mad with grief, I remember running blindly towards the police station to file a case against Noor’s husband’s family. People from his family surrounded me and tried to prevent me from reaching there. Nayeem's neighbours, on the pretext of taking me to the police station, took me somewhere else so that I could not file a complaint in the police station. Meanwhile, Noor was buried hastily.

The process of filing a First Information Report (FIR) was finally completed after four days. I filed a case against Nayeem, his elder brother, this brother’s wife and his younger brother. The latter two were accessories to the crime. I am a devout Muslim woman; in spite of that, I went against everything that I had been taught about being “right” and “Islamic” and had my Noor’s body exhumed. I made sure that a post-mortem was conducted on her. I also gave interviews to the media. On the basis of my FIR, Nayeem and his elder brother were arrested and sent to the Ganganagar City prison. No case was registered against Nayeem’s sister-in-law and younger brother.

I work in a small organisation and the money that I earn is used to run my household. It was not easy for me to travel from Delhi to Ganganagar City. I had to put money together each week to go to the village for court hearing dates. Going back and forth from Delhi was also difficult and fraught with problems being so far away, and my village too is not very easy to reach. During the rains, my husband and I often had to walk through waist length water to reach the village. This was a dangerous time for me. Often when I would go to the village, I would be surrounded by the men in Nayeem's family who would hurl abuses at me and threaten me with dire consequences if I continued my fight. They often said that they would do the same to Noor's sister, Zuleikha. They would stand with guns and block all the entrance gates to the court. However I was very determined to get justice for my Noor daughter and I would say to them, “you killed my daughter, kill me as well, but I will make sure that my daughter’s murderers are punished.”

For about a year, Nayeem and his elder brother were locked up in jail. I would break down and lose heart sometimes, but never lost my resolve. My husband though, lost hope and asked me to rethink about fighting the case in the light of the increasing cost. However, I only kept walking forward, and did not look even back for a moment.

After more than a year of the case being fought in the lower court, two of the accused were given a sentence of ten years in jail along with a fine of Rs. 12,000. Both of them, Nayeem and his brother, are still in jail in Jaipur but have been granted bail. An appeal has been filed against the same.