Five thrown off train in UP: Back with girls, mother says can’t recall how she reached village

Afreen with her three children at Sitapur district hospital. (Express Photo: Vishal Srivastav)

IT’S BEEN over a week since seven-year-old Anbul was allegedly pushed off the train by her father. Lying at Sitapur District Hospital’s orthopedic ward, her left leg in a cast, Anbul reminisces how happy she was to embark on her first train ride to Jammu — the workplace of their father Iddu Ansari, now accused of throwing her and three other daughters out of the train.

Next to her bed stands her mother Afreen, who was reported to have died after being pushed off the train, till she turned up at her native village Jhakra at West Champaran’s Bettiah area in Bihar on Monday.

“I was asleep…. I felt someone picking me up and throwing me out of the train,” says Anbul, who had initially blamed her mother’s cousin Iqbal and his friend Izhar for the incident. Asked if she had seen who pushed her, Anbul keeps quiet. Seconds later, she says: “Abbu (father)”.

Asked why she blamed her uncle, Anbul starts crying. “Abbu feki (father threw),” she says as her maternal grandmother Rabeena attends to her.

On October 24, Munni (6) was found dead along the railway tracks in Sitapur. Near her were her injured sisters Anbul and Saleeba (4). A day later, a woman — later identified as Afreen by her mother — was found dead near the tracks at Maigalganj in Lakhimpur Kheri. Her 11-year-old daughter, Rabiya, was found unconscious near the tracks in Mahmudabad. The youngest girl, Haseena (2), couldn’t be found.

As Rabiya was admitted to King Georage Medical University in Lucknow and Anbul and Saleeba to the Sitapur hospital, Afreen reached Bihar along with Haseena on October 30. A police team camping in the Katra area of Jammu is yet to trace Ansari, where he used to work as a construction worker.

“I was asleep when Haseena started crying for milk. I woke up and couldn’t find my other daughters… When I confronted my husband, he said that as I had given birth to girls, I should also have known who would pay for their expenses and their weddings,” says Afreen, adding that afraid of losing Haseena too, she kept quiet.

Afreen claims that Ansari had asked her to return to her parents soon after she gave birth to Rabiya. “Since then, I had been living with my mother. He would come once in three to four months, give us Rs 100 or Rs 200 and leave. This time he wanted to take us along… I was hesitant,” she says.

Her mother, Rabeena, says that as she could not find a match for Afreen, her brother suggested Iddu. “It was a mistake. We earn Rs 50 per day by working in the fields. Iddu would come once in a few months… This time, I thought he might have changed and wanted to take them with him… The girls were really happy…,” she adds.

Asked how she managed to return to her village, Afreen says she doesn’t remember. “Iddu fled… I had gone crazy… I thought my other girls were dead. I am not educated and just knew the name of my village and Bettiah… I had gone outside of my village for the first time… I begged people to take me to a train that goes to Bettiah.”

Asked if she tried to call Iddu on his cellphone, Afreen says she neither knows how to use a mobile, nor has Iddu’s number.