They Didn't Cut the Tree

Despite global outrage at the gang rape and murder of two minors in Budaun, UP in May 2014, nine years later the case has not reached trial stage. The family continue to live in fear in the same village, awaiting justice

- Avantika Mehta

SAVITRI Devi’s (name changed) home is a windowless four-walled structure roofed with corrugated metal. The only comforts are a dim camping light and a rickety pedestal fan. Since May 27, 2014, when her husband Ramesh Lal (name changed) discovered the corpses of her 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old niece, hanged from a mango tree in a field just 600 metres from their home, this dark room has been the only place the 55-year-old woman feels “somewhat safe.”

Sitting on a sagging charpai that faces two plastic lawn chairs—the only furniture the Lals own—Savitri Devi says, “I only leave my house if I have some work, and then I come right back. Before it gets dark, I always come back and stay inside, no matter what—all the women in our family, and the girl we have left, do this.”

It’s been ten years since the Lal brothers found their children’s bodies. Every day, they go to labour in a Yadavlandlord’s field a 100 metres away from the mango tree on which their daughters’ bodies swung, tiny shoes fallen onto the dirt. “The bottom of their feet was full of thornes,” says Sona Lal, tears welling up in his eyes.

The only little girl left in the Savitri Devi’s family is her youngest niece; Umesh Lal’s (name changed) five-yeardaughter, younger sister to a girl whom she will never know about if her father can help it, he says. “Right now, she’s young, she is not afraid. But I am.” Sighing, eyes wide with an unceasing grief, he explains, “The men who killed my daughter are free, unpunished, and live on the other side of this village.”