This has to be one of the most challenging assignments of my career so far. Without the victim's voice, the story would have been incomplete. But finding her was the challenge. We met the accused in Tihar where I booked an appointment through the helpline. It was a difficult meeting. I was abused verbally for landing in the prison, hijacking an appointment that was meant for her sister and friend.
A Nigerian inmate at Tihar started beating against the glass shouting "Leave" and so I left.
But Simran had spoken to me and I had hurriedly noted her words on a few sheets of paper I was allowed to carry inside.
But Anu was missing. It took us days and nights roaming around the streets, the neighborhoods she lived in, and ransacking court documents and pleading the police for some lead. Nobody knew where she had gone.
We finally stumbled upon someone who said they would take me to her place on Saturday night. On Sunday morning I went. But she wasn't there. At 3 p.m. I stood underneath her house and saw her emerge from the taxi. I sent a message to my editor that I was standing in front of her but I couldn't say if she will speak to me.
She did. It was difficult being there, and see her narrate once again what she went through.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday Section of The Indian Express on Feb. 12, 2011.
Since I spent too many days chasing the story, I didn't what to omit and what to include. Thanks to the editors who cut it beautifully.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, February 10, 2011
Her body feels like a cage.
Trapped inside the stitched-up confines of her face are tears accumulated over six years where she cried for hours mourning the loss of her face, her eyes, and her chances at a better life after an acid attack one evening six years ago.
The acid that melted her face didn’t spare her eyes. It went deep into the sockets, dismembering nerves, and cutting off the light forever.
The doctors sealed up the eyes. An aperture in one eye bleeds those tears once in a while but when Anu Mukherjee, the bar dancer that ruled the hearts of men, cries there’s only the muffled sound of sobs that seem to emerge from a void, knocking desperately against her own body to find an outlet.
The acid violence that took away so much from her also rendered her “tearless.”
The perpetrator was a friend, a fellow dancer at the same bar who was overcome by jealousy, according to court records.
Anu Mukherjee and Meena Khan alias Simran danced at the same hotel, and had the same patrons. But one was the rising star. The other was afraid of falling behind.
The story of rage, jealousy and insecurity culminated in an acid attack that left Anu with a disfigured face. For years, the case dragged in the lower courts. In January, the judgment came. Simran and her brother Raju alias Qayoom, the co-accused, were sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment.
“Since the complainant has gone blind due to the act of the convicts, both accused Simran and Raju are ordered to undergo RI,” Justice SC Rajan said in the courtroom.
Anu wasn’t there. The victim was somewhere in the city coming to terms with her fate.
The accused were arrested and a chargesheet was filed against them under Sections 307/326/120B (attempt to murder/causing grievous hurt/criminal conspiracy.
The court acquitted Simran in case relating to attempt to murder, saying that the intention of the accused was not to kill. It was only to disfigure her face so that she loses her job.
Life in the Bar
Her face is like an undulating landscape, and the monotony of it breaks only with the nose, which was reconstructed, a hasty job done by the doctors. The acid had melted away too much.
We found Anu after days of searching around the city. For six years, Anu has been trying to disconnect with the past, changing apartments, leaving people behind. But it caught up with her. She came to know of the judgment through the newspapers.
Anu sat trapped for years inside her decaying body, feeling her flesh harden and become permanent.
Six years ago, on a cold December evening, her face burned, and the stench of charred flesh kept off everyone. She lived with it.
On December 19, 2004, in the twilight hours, Anu Mukherjee stepped into Parvez Alam’s auto to get to Rajdoot Hotel where she danced in two shifts.
Around the corner from her rented apartment in Garhi, a man was waiting, lurking in the shadows. It just took moments for him to lift his shawl, and hurl the chemical on to Anu’s face.
The man, Anu later said in her statement in the court, was her friend’s brother.
Both Meena Khan alias Simran and Anu danced at the Rajdoot Hotel.
That’s where the girls became friends.
They had the same patrons, too. On the stage, the one with vines in the background and a series of yellow and red disco lights that covered the girls in colourful beams
of light, and old Ahuja brand speakers, the girls danced, and dreamed of a career in Bollywood, or falling in love, making someone fall in love with them so they could leave behind the notoriety of a bar girl’s life and the insecurities associated with a profession that lasted only for a few years until the wrinkles didn’t begin to show.
The stage became the focal point of the story of the two dancers - the perpetrator and the victim.
Both had similar stories. They were poor, and danced to survive, and run their families.
Anu, who hails from Kolkata, came to live with her aunt who lived in Mehrauli in Delhi at a very early age. Her other siblings stayed on with her parents in West Bengal. Her father Sunil worked as a lawyer and had five children.
She was orphaned at a young age when her parents passed away in an accident.
“I was around 10 when they died,” she said. “That’s when the troubles began.”
Anu dropped out of a Bengali medium school in Mehrauli after she completed Class 8 and took up a job of cutting threads at an export house in Govindpuri. It paid her Rs. 2,000 for her labour.
By then, her younger brother Raju had come to live with them.
“I left the job soon. I always had big dreams,” Anu said.
That afternoon, as we sat in her small apartment with its garish orange walls, Anu revisited the horror.
“You know, at 20, I left for Mumbai to work in television serials. I wanted to earn money. I finally ended up in Maya and Deepa bars in Mumbai,” Anu said. “I loved to dance. I liked that life but I had responsibility.”
After days of asking around for her, we finally found her in a small apartment that she shares with a friend and her brother and Frooty, the dog.
After the acid attack, Anu said she received threats from Simran, who served about three months behind bars and got out on bail. They changed several apartments over the next few years and left no numbers.
In the court records where she last recorded her statement in 2009, Anu used her Garhi address.
Nobody knew where they had gone. Even the public prosecutor wondered if Anu had read in the papers about Meena Khan’s conviction. In January, six years after Anu was transformed from a lively and beautiful 25-year-old dancer into a blind disfigured survivor of the acid violence in a matter of few seconds, Meena Khan and her brother
Raju were sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment by the Patiala House Court.
Additional Sessions Judge S C Rajan also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on the duo, directing that 80 per cent of the amount should be paid to the victim.
In 2005, Anu recognized the perpetrators by their voices in the courtroom. She said in her statement “ ... as she was envious of me and I was more beautiful and was a good dancer and for this reason she used to hate me. During that quarrel the accused, Simran, threatened me that if I quarrelled with her and said ‘agar mujhse panga legi toh” she would get acid thrown at me and would get me killed.”
In the FIR, she had said Simran was furious because Anu danced better than her.
The judge noted in the court “The complainant has gone blind due to act of accused persons and they are not entitled to any leniency.”
But for Anu, the sentence isn’t proportionate to the damage that was done to her.
She has found faith since. But back in those days when she was still trying to come to terms with the reality of an acid attack that disfigured her face, which she could only feel with her fingers because it also took away her vision, Anu Mukherjee was a lost soul.
She lived in Garhi then.
After the Acid Violence
In its cramped gullies, with its buildings almost embracing each other, the sound of her loss never travelled laterally. Instead they rose up in the air, and on most nights they found a receiver in the woman on the fourth floor, who listened in, but never could gather the courage to run downstairs and console the wailing woman who mourned through the nights the ruination of her identity, of what could have
been and what was to come.
The woman upstairs had only heard from others that the acid had melted the dancer’s face. She didn’t want to scream. She knew she would. They talked in the building that her face looked like an alien’s face. It had no human features.
Anu hardly ever stepped out of her apartment and when she did, her face was tightly wrapped in a scarf.
She recalled how Anu had come to her apartment on Diwali.
“She looked so beautiful,” the neighbour said.
One night, she saw Anu jump off her balcony. She fainted.
That was a year after the acid violence. Anu had attempted suicide earlier, too. She would turn the knob and let the cooking gas seep into the rooms.
The neighbours told a harried Raju to lock the kitchen door.
And then, one night she jumped and landed on the concrete below. She was rushed to Safdarjung Hospital.
“I don’t want to live and if they want me to live, they must show me a way to live,” Anu said. "I have no money, nothing."
A woman who lived next door told Anu to turn to God and faith slowly began to fill the void in her life.
Next to her bed, there is a small fake Christmas tree. Anu is waiting for a miracle.
Faith defies reason, or science. It fuels hope through the possibilities.
Doctors have said that her vision won’t be fixed. But in the same church where she found peace, she stumbled upon hope, too.
“I pray. I go to temples and churches. I want to be okay,” she said.
“I want to see Jesus and I want to dance again.”
Anu stayed in Mumbai for two-and-a-half years and then returned to
Delhi to take care of her brother.
A friend spotted an advertisement in the papers for dancers at Rajdoot Hotel. Anu went for an interview, and was offered the contract job to dance in the bar through the evenings.
“I bought dresses, lehengas and sarees and started the job,” she said.
The stage
The hotel is stuck in time, too with its maroon leather chairs and a moustachioed man who mans the bar. The dancing stopped in 2004 but the stage hasn’t been dismantled. It is preserved as a tribute to those heady evenings where men toasted to
beauty.
On the sides, there are fountains, and it recreates some idyllic landscape from the mythology where beautiful women danced suggestively to disturb the meditation of great saints.
Once the fountains must have gurgled with water, and the speakers must have played the hit Bollywood songs.
There were around nine dancers.
“I danced in front of 500 men. Who knows what they thought. I was an artist,” she said.
As a child, she had learned Bharatnatyam. When she found the job, she enrolled in a Bollywood dance class in Lajpat Nagar.
After a year when she had some savings, Anu moved out of her aunt’s house.
“There was the collection and the salary and that was a lot. When I danced, they threw money. Half of it would go to the hotel and half would be mine,” Anu said. “We had a good time.”
Her rise also triggered her fall. She was crowned number one on new year’s competition for a few years in a row. She also became Miss Rajdoot.
“I looked beautiful. I was young. I loved life,” Anu said. “Meena was my friend. She got jealous and I didn’t pay heed to her threats.”
She has albums as a testimony to her lost beauty.
In those days when her career peaked, Anu had coloured hair, a shade of gold, and had chubby cheeks and a sweet smile. She loved the camera, and posed often.
She was in love. A man, who frequented the bar, had proposed. His wife had died and he had a son named Harsh. In the album, traces of that love are scattered.
They were to get married soon. But after her flesh was corrupted, corroded and made to look like pulp, he abandoned her. Anu wouldn’t speak about the bitterness of the relationship. She understood. She had to.
A few patrons from her past life are in touch still.
“She was a great dancer. I used to request for her dance each time I went to the hotel,” he said over the phone.
In her isolation, Anu called him up looking for support. After a while, Mayuresh stopped taking her calls.
“I couldn’t afford helping her,” he said. “The doctor’s fee was too high. In 2010, I stopped giving her money because I had my own family to provide for and my business wasn’t doing too well.”
Mayuresh said he knew Anu since 2000. A few days ago, he read about the conviction and called her. He said she should appeal in the high court against the judgment.
“It is too less. But then I thought what’s the benefit. What will become of her life? She is dying every day,” he said. “For someone so beautiful, it is unbearable to accept that her face is disfigured, and is beyond repairs. She was the beauty queen back in those days. Now she looks like an alien."
On December 20, a day after the acid struck her, she was to board a train to Vaishno Devi to pray for success. The New Year’s competition was around the corner and she needed blessings.
“I still have the ticket,” she said.
For three days she lay in the hospital. She screamed and kicked about, talked to the dozens of media persons who beat against the hospital windows for interviews.
“I kept crying. I couldn’t see,” she said. “I had no eyes.”
A surge of anger beat up in her, and she shivered, trying to fight back the tears that would remain stuck as countless others.
“I want them to die in the middle of the street and such a death that it should send shudders through others’ bodies. I want a strong message to be sent out,” she said.
According to the public prosecutor Indra Kumar, the conviction and the sentence didn’t constitute a strong message.
Five years isn’t any deterrent, he said.
He said he would appeal in the high court against the judgment of the lower court.
“Her life was spoilt. She lost her vision, her beauty and her life. At least, it should be 10 years,” he said.
Another neighbour, a woman who stood by her through her most difficult days and lived on the same floor in the Garhi apartment, said she couldn’t bear to look at her after the acid attack.
“Nobody could dare to see her. After the surgery when they reconstructed the nose, we could bear to look at her,” she said. “She attempted suicide. That’s when I told her to start chanting. She sold all her gold in her frustration. She was very poor. I met her first in 2004 on Diwali when she came with a gift. I tied her saree and she
looked so radiant and beautiful.”
In the building, people’s reference changed overnight. They always referred to her as the model. But after she was disfigured, it was the blind girl, the victim who lived with her brother.
In the colonies that she lived in after she left her Garhi flat, the vendors, the dhobis all remember her as the blind girl with a burnt face who lived with her brother.
Her brother’s life was also affected. He had to drop out of the MCD school in Malviya Nagar and look for odd jobs.
Now 21, Raju works at a hardware store in Nehru Place and earns about Rs. 6,000 a month. He bears a striking resemblance to his sister.
“We had to struggle. She laughs and she cries,” he said. “We are always running away. We don’t want to face people, their questions.”
In the court, Anu came with Raju. He was 15 years old.
Meeting Simran in Tihar
In the court files of the State Vs. Meena Khan case, the accused deemed “incorrect” all the allegations.
Meena Khan signed off with “I am innocent and falsely implicated.”
But Indra Kumar, the prosecutor, said that the accused didn’t produce a single witness to substantiate her claims.
We met Meena Khan in Tihar jail.
In the waiting area, we sat on cold slabs. A Nigerian man sat in a corner, a few women were crying silently. An old man was tugging at a bag full of snacks for his daughter who was serving time in a fake currency scam.
They called out my name and I went past each window trying to figure who Simran could be.
She emerged from the background and motioned to me come to the last window. The glass barrier separated us.
It didn’t begin very well. She was upset that I hijacked an appointment that was meant to be with her sister and friend.
Simran’s hair was golden like a blazing sun. The curls framed her face.
She didn’t like the prison. She said she had young children who needed her. Her husband passed away a few years ago.
“Anu wasn’t beautiful. Even the dog won’t piss on her face,” Simran said. “I am suffering for a crime I didn’t commit. Even my brother has a family. They are on the streets. Anu is a bad woman. She was a prostitute.”
She said two months before the court order, Anu had asked for Rs. 10 lakhs from her to withdraw the case.
“I am poor. Where would I get the money from,?” she said. “Babbuji from Rajdoot Hotel was mediating. He knows the truth. Look at me. Am I not more beautiful?”
“How is it that they relied on her statement? At least 10 people are called to identify victims. She was the only one. This is not justice. She is lying. She was older than me. I was 18 only,” Meena Khan yelled.
Then she was whisked away by a woman and she refused to talk further.
I was asked to leave.
Manmohan, the owner of Rajdoot Hotel, said he knew both the women. He said it was a shoddy investigation done by the Delhi Police.
“Simran was a better dancer of the two. I remember the night they came to take her away. She was dancing in the hotel. I accompanied her to the police station,” he said. “Why would Simran’s brother throw acid? What is his incentive? It is a false case.”
The hotel paid the hospital bills and even sent Anu to Punjab to get her eyes checked. But nothing came out of it.
“It is a sad story of two women. One of them lost her vision and the other is in jail. I won’t mind deposing in the court. Simran was the star. Neither of them was afraid of losing their jobs.”
But the hotel official who deposed in the court didn’t say any of this in his statement. Kamal Sharma of Rajdoot Hotel said the girls were contract employees and weren’t the staff of the hotel.
“During the cross examination, Simran didn’t say she wasn’t there. When the court gave her the chance to explain, she didn’t say anything. She never made any hotel employee a witness,” Indra Kumar, the prosecutor, said. “In her state, in that kind of pain, why would Anu make false allegations against her friend?”
The Hope
There are too many voices in this story. There were 19 witnesses.
In six years, a lot has changed. Anu has learned to hope.
And it is hope that drowns the sorrow, and the anger, the betrayal.
“Maybe I will get my eyes. Doctors have said no but I have faith. I want to serve with my eyes,” she said. “I want to see myself. I have desires. I want to dance again.”
Dream by dream, she is learning to hope.
Her dreams have their context in her situation now but the images are of a lost world.
Anu said most nights she dreams she is laying on a hospital bed and doctors are bent over her with their tools.
In her dreams she has faith in the doctors. They are working on her eyes. Her vision would return.
And then, she wakes up. Darkness takes over.
It is a dream of dreams. It replays every night.
