Clad in blue jeans and pink top, she looks a little tall for a 10-year-old as she walks confidently in a pair of wedges at her mother’s home in the heart of Badaun city.
On her left palm is a stamp from Badaun jail, where she went to meet her father Sarvesh Yadav on October 4, and on the right is a list scribbled in his handwriting. He wants chocolates, chips, fruit cake, and biscuits when she visits him the next time.
Sarvesh, the former president of Samajwadi Yuvjan Sabha (Badaun), is accused of killing his brother and his wife’s lover.
The little girl has matured before her age. She has seen a prison, knows the meaning of “bail” and is fully aware of what went wrong with her family.
“Mumma se ladai nahi karna. Acche se rehna unke sath. Unse kehna I am sorry [Don’t fight with your mother. Be nice to her. Tell her I am sorry],” she tells her mother Vijeta Yadav, when asked about the conversation she had with Sarvesh in jail.
Arranged marriage
Vijeta, the Block Pramukh of Bilsi and Ambiya Pur since March 2016, was 21-year-old when her parents married her off to Sarvesh in 2005. Their daughter was born in October 2006, the same month that Vijeta first met Ankit Kumar Singh alias Ankur Chauhan, the man who changed the course of her life.
Fighting for justice: Neelam Singh, mother of Ankur, and her younger son Ashish at their house in Badaun. The family has cordial ties with Vijeta Yadav, who is a prime witness in the murder cases against her husband Sarvesh Yadav.
“Sometimes, I regret meeting him and falling in love with him. Sometimes, I wonder if I hadn’t accepted his love for me, my life would have been normal,” she says, sitting in the small two-bedroom house in Badaun’s A block she shared with Sarvesh. Ankur’s home is in the same lane, just two houses away. Her in-laws live in a village nearby. Vijeta used to visit them earlier but not any more.
Her usually empty home is abuzz with two little visitors — her daughter and 7-year-old son, who currently stay with their maternal grandparents.
The boy, she says proudly, is her son with Ankur and was born in 2010. Though Sarvesh was aware that the boy was Ankur’s, he never confronted Vijeta about it and “loved him like his own”.
Strained relations
Her relationship with Sarvesh, says Vijeta, suffered because he failed to give her enough time and was involved with two other women.
“I wouldn’t eat till he came home, but he would get late every other day claiming he was in a party meeting...And then I met Ankur, who gave me respect. I fell for him,” she admits.
Vijeta remembers standing in her house in December 2006 when Ankur came in, knelt down and confessed his love for her. At that point, she says, she told him they couldn’t be together because she was married and had a child. In the early months of 2007, his relentless pursuit made her give in.
As she steps out of her house, Vijeta remembers walking hand in hand with Ankur on the same street every evening. She points to a park and says, “He used to park his car that side and play volleyball here.”
Two neighbours standing nearby give her a suspicious look, but she says she doesn’t care. Everyone, including Ankur’s family, was aware of their relationship, she claims.
“Sarvesh knew about us but never said anything to me. All of them wanted our relationship to be kept under wraps; they were okay with it as long as it didn’t disturb the families,” she claims.
However, Ankur’s mother Neelam Singh disagrees. Wearing a big red bindi and a loose nightgown, she welcomes Vijeta and her children into her house. Her younger son Ashish Kumar Singh also joins them.
Marriage plan
Talking about Vijeta-Ankur’s relationship, Ms. Singh says she wanted it to end and that’s why she got Ankur married to Pooja Singh in 2013.
“When we went to see Pooja, Vijeta went with us and she also said she liked her,” she says. Vijeta refutes the claim saying she neither agreed nor disagreed.
Nevertheless, the relationship between Vijeta and Ankur was strained for a brief period after his wedding. His brother Ashish claims: “Everything was fine for the first seven months and then he went back to Vijeta.”
While she stays quiet in front of the family, Vijeta later refutes Ashish’s seven-month claim.
“Two months after his marriage, it was Ankur’s birthday on September 26. He offered the first piece of cake to me and not his wife,” she says.
According to Ms. Singh, Pooja started complaining about Ankur’s rude and distant behaviour once she realised he was involved with Vijeta, and this led to several fights between Ankur and his parents.
“Many a time, he was thrown out of the house. He would go and stay with our relatives in Bareilly,” says the mother.
On October 30, 2015, Pooja left the house and resolved never to return. Meanwhile, a few metres away, Vijeta confronted Sarvesh for the first time in years.
“I love Ankur and I want to stay with him,” she recalls telling Sarvesh and asking for divorce.
“His reaction was heartbreaking. He cried for a long time because no matter what he was doing outside the marriage, his feelings for me were true. They still are,” she says with a quiver in her voice.
Twisted ties
However, Sarvesh refused to divorce Vijeta, who continued her relationship with Ankur. In fact, Ankur worked on and off as an associate with Sarvesh.
“The three of them used to go for dinners even though Sarvesh knew about Ankur and Vijeta. He wanted her in his life at any cost,” says Ms. Singh.
However, Vijeta claims Sarvesh’s peace offering was merely “pretence”. She alleged that he asked her to file a false complaint of theft against Ankur in March 2016. She refused outright.
A month later, Vijeta and Ankur fled Badaun along with their son. A chase began, with Sarvesh and the police behind them for the next 17 days. The journey that started from Badaun via Moradabad, Faridabad, Mathura and Kanpur ended in Haldwani — where the duo was finally caught. Badaun Superintendent of Police (City) Kamal Kishore confirmed that Vijeta and Ankur were apprehended. Vijeta says she knows exactly how the police and Sarvesh found them.
“The night before we were caught, Ankur called an associate who knew Sarvesh. He didn’t tell me, otherwise we would have left immediately. We stayed the longest in Haldwani and even made friends,” she remembers.
The murder
Vijeta left Sarvesh’s home in January 2017 after an argument over her relationship with Ankur and went to live with her parents in Etawah. However, her parents were against her relationship with Ankur and this strained her ties with them too. Though her children stay with her parents, she prefers not to visit them.
In Etawah too, Vijeta was constantly in touch with Ankur through a mobile phone she hid from her family.
She last spoke to Ankur when she called him on February 8 around 7.30 p.m. The next morning, his body was found near Baheri Stadium; he was bludgeoned to death with bricks, the police said.
Ashish told Badaun police that Ankur had gone to meet Sarvesh in the evening on February 8.
“He told me that Sarvesh bhaiya had called him alone. I insisted on going along, but he dropped me a few metres before the stadium. I waited. An hour later, I saw Sarvesh bhaiya running towards the road and getting into a tempo, and later into a car. There was another person with him whom I couldn’t identify,” claims Ashish.
Unable to reach Ankur on his phone or locate him, Ashish informed the police and a kidnapping case was filed. They searched in and around the stadium but could not find him. Around 4 a.m. the next day, Ankur’s body was found at the same spot where they had looked for him the night before.
Mr. Kishore suspected that Ankur’s body was dumped at the spot in the morning. Vijeta was informed about Ankur’s murder on February 9.
“I don’t want to recall that day,” she says, her eyes welling up with tears.
Sarvesh’s alibi
The next day, Sarvesh went to meet Vijeta in Etawah. The moment she saw him, she accused him of killing Ankur. He tried to convince her saying he was in Allahabad for a court hearing.
On whether Sarvesh’s alibi was airtight, Mr. Kishore said: “He wasn’t using his phone. He had given it to someone else.”
Did the police check his signature marking his presence in Allahabad court? The officer said, “It’s not in the case file.”
Vijeta claims she pledged not to eat or drink till Sarvesh told her the truth.
“On February 16, he told me ‘ agar tumhe lagta hai humne mara hai, toh maan lia humne mara hai, par ab khana kha lo [If you think I have killed him then I admit I have, but please eat now]’,” she says repeating the alleged confession statement she later gave to the media.
Vijeta says her parents held her captive “with love” at their home till the first week of March, when Sarvesh came and took her to Delhi.
“I will never forget those four days till I freed myself from Sarvesh’s clutches. It also happens to be the last time I ever saw him,” she says.
On March 7, Sarvesh took her to The Great India Place mall in Noida, from where she called Ankur’s family and told them that “he might kill me too”. Why did she think so? “I suspected something wrong,” she says.
A few hours later, she managed to flee from a restaurant in Delhi, where they had decided to have a meal.
“That night I stayed in a shelter home run by an NGO. The next night, I stayed in a hotel in Paharganj. I discovered later that Sarvesh had managed to locate the shelter home and had gone there looking for me. I was hoping that someone from Ankur’s family would come and get me but all they did was inform the police that I was in Delhi,” she says.
Explaining, Ms. Singh says: “We were scared for our life. We thought the police would go and get her.”
Brother’s murder
On March 11, Vijeta reached Bareilly and stayed at the home of one of Ankur’s relatives for the next few months.
Before Vijeta reached Bareilly, another person related to the case was murdered exactly the same way as Ankur. The body of Sarvesh’s brother Umesh Yadav, who was allegedly mentally disturbed, was found in Bilsi on March 9. He was an accused in Ankur’s murder.
“The modus operandi in Umesh’s murder was same as Ankur’s. He too died of brain haemorrhage after being bludgeoned with bricks,” says Badaun Superintendent of Police (Rural) Surendra Pratap Singh.
Initially, Ankur’s brother and parents were named as accused in Umesh’s murder. The motive, according to Sarvesh’s family, was revenge for Ankur’s death. Police investigation however revealed that the trio were at their Badaun house at the time of the murder.
“Both the murders were committed the same way, which is why Sarvesh became an accused in both the cases,” says a senior police officer.
Vijeta never got to see Ankur’s body as she wasn’t allowed to step out of her home in Etawah. But when she saw the photograph of Ankur’s body, taken by his family, she resolved to put his killer behind bars.
“ Bohot buri tarah mara tha unhe [they killed him savagely],” she says.
Convinced that Sarvesh had killed Ankur, Vijeta approached senior police officers on April 11 requesting them to take action against Sarvesh. “I met all the senior officers and told them that he had done it. The motive was clear — he couldn’t bear the fact that I was in a relationship with Ankur. It had hurt his honour,” she says.
In no time, Sarvesh became a wanted criminal. Two days later, he turned himself in and confessed to killing Ankur.
“I killed Ankur along with Umesh, and [associates] Prem Yadav and Dheeru Yadav,” read Sarvesh’s confession. The charge sheet in the case was filed in July. Sarvesh was recently granted bail in the case. The Badaun Superintendent of Police (Rural), however, refused to share investigation details into the murder of Umesh, for which the charge sheet hasn’t been filed yet and Sarvesh continues to remain in jail.
On whether Sarvesh told the police about the sequence of events on the night of Ankur’s murder, Mr. Kishore says, “It’s not in the case file.”
Second thoughts
Six months have passed since Sarvesh was sent to jail, and now Vijeta has second thoughts about her decision to approach the police against him.
“Did he really kill Ankur,” she wonders, admitting that her statement played a major role in his arrest.
“If he had to kill him, he could have done it years ago. What happened on February 8? He kept saying he didn’t do it. We’ll see what happens in the trial.”
In July, Vijeta returned to her house in Badaun, where she first met Ankur, and put a nameplate, “Vijeta, W/O Ankur Chauhan”.
To her shock, Ankur’s father got it removed immediately. “ Ye kya natak hai [What is this drama],” she recalls him saying.
His objection, however, has not deterred her from grieving Ankur’s death. Now, she only wears black and white.
