SANHATI BANERJEE
“Nobody asked about my health before you.”
When I met Heena Banu—up a steep flight of stairs that led to her father’s damp, rented one-room home—in the town of Channagiri, 55 km northeast of Bengaluru, I found a soft-spoken but determined woman who never could complete her secondary school education.
She spoke of many things in sadness and anger, and she demanded answers.
Her hair loosely covered by the fall of a black dupatta that functioned as a hijab, she spoke of her late husband, Mohammad Adil, a 30-year-old carpenter, who on 24 May 2024, was detained by police in Channagiri, in Karnataka’s Davangere district, on charges of matka gambling, never be seen alive again.
She spoke of the economic toll her husband’s death in police custody had taken on her and her family. One of her three children was sick with fever induced by grief, and her parents struggled to meet medical expenses.
Then, she spoke of the toll the ordeal had taken on her health. Until I met her, she said, no one had considered her identity beyond that of a survivor of a tragedy brought on by injustice perpetrated by the State.
When I asked her how she was coping with the loss of her husband, I realised she was traumatised talking about it—as she was every time she talked about the thing she could not forget.
Tears flowing down her cheeks, she told me how her husband’s sudden death had caused her sleepless nights—during which she stared at the ceiling endlessly—recurring fever, cold, and body aches.
A refrain that kept coming up during our conversation was, what exactly was the crime for which her husband had to die?
Matka gambling, a local form of betting in which players place bets on a particular number from a range of available numbers, is a non-cognisable offence, which means the police cannot make an arrest without a warrant or a magistrate’s permission under the Karnataka Police Act, 1963. The police simply did not follow the law they were meant to uphold.
“We were told that the police protect us,” Banu said. “Aisa kya galti kiya tha ki itni badi saza mili (what kind of mistake was it that was met by such a big sentence)?” If found guilty, punishment for gambling—depending on the judge—can be imprisonment of up to three months or a fine of up to Rs 300.
Her father, a daily wage labourer, sat on the floor, while we talked, hunched over, trying to figure out how to deal with the family’s increased expenses. Outside, clothes dried in a shared community space in a working-class neighbourhood where the walls of houses barely had gaps between them.
Her mother asked me, “Do you think she can have a normal life? Will her children go to school?”
I had no answer.
Heena Banu’s condition was the unseen end game of her husband’s death, which sparked an orgy of violence by angry Muslim youth and was met with police retaliation. A stone-throwing mob clashed with police, who dispersed protestors with rubber bullets and baton charges.
Six first information reports (FIRs) were filed against roughly 300 people for unlawful assembly and rioting, leading to 47 arrests by 25 May 2024. One of the young men (name withheld to protect his identity) arrested and later released told me, “The entire purpose of the mass arrests was to intimidate the Muslim community.”
As dusk brought the tidings of an impending storm, I prepared to leave Banu’s residence to gather a few more testimonies. As I bid her goodbye, Banu held up her phone, showing me her picture gallery.
“He would give me some money daily, and I would cook whatever I could, but we were happy,” she said. “He was a loving husband. How does one prepare for such a profound loss?”
Read Sanhati Banerjee’s full story here.
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