Life changed all too suddenly for 26-year-old T. Chitra when she found out that her four-day-old baby girl was no more. On May 16, police exhumed the body that was buried on her backyard and arrested her husband K. Thavamani and mother-in-law K. Pandiammal in connection with the crime.
“I was initially unsure what was happening. Suddenly people began terming it a case of female infanticide. I was in disbelief,” she says.Ms. Chitra says on the day of the incident she went to attend call of nature near a channel close to her house in Sholavandan. “On my return, I saw my child’s mouth frothing. My mother-in-law told me that the child was fed donkey’s milk which did not go well with her. In a couple of minutes, my child was dead. We performed the funeral and I was mourning the death,” she says.
However, her mourning was short-lived as the police exhumed the body and began the arrests.
A police officer investigating the case says both the mother-in-law and son confessed to killing the child. “Our investigation established that it was a clear case of female infanticide. The child’s mother, however, initially thought that it was death due to asphyxiation,” he said. Ms. Chitra says her greatest fear now is raising her three other girls, all below seven years, with her husband in jail. “My children keep asking for their father and I have no answer,” she says.
She claims that neither her husband nor her mother-in-law expressed major disaffection towards the fourth girl child. He worked as a clerk in a travel agency and the mother-in-law ran a petty shop near the house. “Everything seemed normal until that day. I still fail to believe that my husband had something to do with the death,” she says.
Kind sister-in-law
The woman says she is totally dependent on Thavamani’s sister R. Muthulakshmi for food and shelter. She has rejected offers of help from the government. “I only want my husband out of jail,” she says.
Ms. Muthulakshmi says she earns ₹5,000 a month as domestic help and another ₹100 a day from managing her mother’s store. She is confident of helping Ms. Chitra pay her children’s fees as the eldest goes to a matriculation school.
She says the entire chain of incidents still do not feel real. “It feels like a movie playing out in our lives. We read about the incident on WhatsApp and understand that female infanticide is wrong. My mother, who is old, probably did not. Had she committed the crime, it was because she thought another girl child would be a financial burden for my brother,” she says.
“The children are crying and Chitra is eating just one meal a day. We keep telling her to be brave but if I was in her place, I too would do the same,” she says.
Ms. Chitra says everything that could possibly go wrong had gone wrong, but keeps repeating that she wants to see her husband. “Just let me meet him once,” she says.