ANAND ST DAS

Srikishun, 40, has two teenage children to tend to back home. “I have become a lifelong cripple. How can I feed my family when I have become a burden on them?” he asks, lying on an iron cot in the grimy male ward of Siwan’s government-run Sadar Hospital. “I have also become a burden on myself now that I cannot do even my daily chores,” he rued. Covered in thick bandage and shaken by the attack, Srikishun speaks very little. His wife Durgawati Devi looks after him at the hospital while his children — daughter Rajanti, 10, and son Dharmendra, 8 — remain at their home in Siwan. Srikishun no longer remembers the Pune locality where he used to work as a seller of bhunja — a snack prepared by mixing gram rice and groundnut.

He had left for Pune less than a year back and returned in the middle of February after he lost his hands. “I used to go in search of people who liked to eat bhunja. I could not speak or understand Marathi and had made no Bihari friends in Pune. Most Biharis working in Pune had asked me to leave soon, but I stayed back so that I could make a few thousand rupees extra to take back home,” he said. On the night of the attack, he was as usual asleep on the pavement. “In the middle of the night, I heard a group of people shouting ‘Biharis, go away’. The others sleeping on the pavement woke up and started fleeing.

I tried to run but the attackers caught up with me and beat me till I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I had lost my hands and was bleeding. An old man found me and bandaged my hands. He asked me to leave Pune as soon as I could,” recollected Srikishun. “What was my fault? I had done nothing wrong to anyone, but I was punished so mercilessly.” Srikishun caught the first train out of Pune station the next morning and reached Siwan three days later. After a week of treatment in his village, he was admitted to the Sadar Hospital in Siwan by his wife. The Siwan police recorded his statement and sent it to the Pune police. A two-member team from the Pune crime branch visited Srikishun at the hospital.

But his attackers have little chance of being booked as neither has Srikishun been able to coherently speak about the attackers nor has the Sadar hospital’s injury report clearly established the nature of the attack that caused him to lose his hands. “It has been difficult for us to ascertain what weapon caused the severance of his hands, but it was clearly the result of violent human attack and not of any mechanical accident. We have said this in the injury report we submitted to the Pune police team. There is no doubt that the man was attacked and lost his hands in the process,” said Dr Sudhir Kumar, deputy superintendent of Sadar Hospital. Sangram Singh Nishandar, ACP (Crime Branch) of Pune Police who visited Srikishun in Siwan on March 5 and 6, was unwilling to speak about the incident. When contacted, he merely said: “We have submitted our report to the special branch”. Raghunath Khere, DCP (Special Branch) of Pune Police, said the inquiry report had come but he did not want to speak about it.

THERE HAS been no initiative from the Bihar government either to persuade the Maharashtra government to bring Srikishun’s attackers to justice. Bihar home secretary Afzal Amanullah, when queried about it, admitted total ignorance and requested details from TEHELKA. “I am sorry we still do not know of this incident. Please provide us details about this man. We would certainly take the required initiatives,” he said. The RJD’s state vice-president Awadh Bihari Chaudhary, who was one of the politicians who visited Srikishun at the hospital, says it is unpardonable that the Nitish government is not even aware of Srikishun’s tragedy. “His attackers must be brought behind the bars soon and the government should start initiatives in that direction immediately,” he demanded. “I do not know how will we arrange daily meals. My daughter had stopped attending school. Now my son too has to stop going to school.

We have to take care of him as well as do work to survive. My husband had done no harm to anyone. He has become a victim of some politicians and criminals. I request the government to inquire my husband’s case and punish the criminals,” said Srikishun’s wife Durgawati, weeping. Right now, there are not many who can lend an ear to her and feel the pain of this migrant Bihari family.

WRITER’S E-MAIL:
anandstdas@gmail.com


From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 14, Dated April 12, 2008