Bulandshahr: India girls who wrote letter with blood get justice
Image credit: BBC
After an Indian young girl wrote a letter in her own blood appealing for justice for her mother, who had been burned alive, the culprit was given a six-year term.
Based on the eyewitness testimony of Latika Bansal, now 21 years old, and her younger sister, Manoj Bansal, was sentenced to life in prison.
Court testimony from the daughters revealed that their father had previously physically abused their mother for “not having a son.”
Bansal denied the accusations and claimed that his wife had committed suicide.
On Wednesday, Bansal was found guilty of killing his wife in Bulandshahr City, Uttar Pradesh, on the grounds that she “had not given birth to a boy.”
The Bansal sisters testified in court throughout the trial about growing up and witnessing their mother, Anu Bansal, being physically abused and subjected to repeated taunts from their father and his family for having only daughters.
The court was also informed that Anu was compelled to have six abortions after unlawful sex tests proved she was expecting a girl.
The sister stated that their lives were permanently changed on the morning of June 14, 2016, when their father allegedly used the assistance of his relatives—who contest the claims made against them—to douse their mother in kerosene and set her ablaze.
Our alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. We couldn’t help her because the door to our room was shut from the outside and we couldn’t hear our mother’s cries. In their trial court testimony, the girls claimed, “We saw her burning.”
Anu Bansal had 80 per cent of her burns, according to the medical staff who treated her. Shortly after, she passed away in the hospital.
The sisters’ cause didn’t receive much attention until they accused the then-chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, in a letter that they penned when they were 15 and 11 years old, of turning a murder case into a suicide.
Mr Yadav gave higher law enforcement and administrative officials instructions to supervise the case after the local police investigator was suspended for failing to undertake an exhaustive probe.
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