Narayan Yadav sat inside his one-room accommodation in east Delhi’s Mandawali, right next to the one where three daughters of his best friend Mangal Singh had allegedly died due to starvation on July 24.
A bachelor at 45, Yadav has shifted to the next room because people had broken the single window and door to peep inside when the incident had happened, he says. He has also asked his landlord Bhagat Singh to inform everyone who asks for him that he does not stay here any more. “I have seen difficult times in life, but seeing three children dead… I almost died myself. If that was not enough, the media and others asked me questions that hurt me. I stopped responding to everyone but officials,” he said.
Lost count of places
Yadav has run from pillar to post to find Mangal who has been missing since the incident. Unable to count the number of places he has visited, he mentioned all the railway stations, popular rickshaw stands, temples where “free food is available for all”, liquor shops often visited by Mangal and houses of all the friends and acquaintances.
“Police also looked for him and I accompanied them but after a while I was travelling alone in autorickshaws,” he said.
Meanwhile, he is looking after Mangal’s mentally unfit wife Bina who is being treated at Institute of Human Behaviour and Applied Sciences. “She does not feel a thing. She knows everything but, if you talk to her, she sounds unaffected,” he said. Yadav stayed in the hospital regularly till the first week of August but has started visiting once in a few days now because he “needs to earn” as well.
Mother ‘doing better’
Bina, he said, is doing better. She has started walking and talking but her hands are in catatonic state.
Recalling the last days of the girls, Yadav reminisced about how he had helped in their upbringing, sometimes with money and often extending moral support. “ Badki [eldest daughter] mere paas aake kehti thi ‘chacha’ mujhe ₹10 do, main kuch khaane ki cheez leke aaungi [Uncle, give me ₹10, I will bring something to eat]”.
The friend maintained that the family was pushed out of their previous house because the rickshaw taken on rent by Mangal from the landlord, who also ran rickshaw-renting business, was snatched by some goons. He was also beaten up. By then, Mangal had lost two rickshaws. The first one that was stolen a few months ago. “I got threats from people where he used to live earlier to stop saying the family was pushed out,” Yadav alleged, adding that Mangal had hit the bottom in his life.
‘Cared for daughters’
But he was a doting father, the friend said. Yadav said his friend used to wake up in the morning, cook for the girls and feed them before leaving the house for work because he knew his wife was “a bit slow”.
However, he committed one mistake, he believes. “The girls were unwell. They were suffering from diarrhoea and were vomiting but they ate pulses, chicken, chapatis, rice in intervals. On the evening of July 23, their condition worsened and I asked him to take them to the hospital but he refused,” he said.
Mangal allegedly told his friend that “he knows how to take care of his children” and that “they have fallen ill like this before and got better”.
He then went to the chemist, bought some medicines and gave them to the girls. “I remember the girls were saying ‘ Papa, paani de do ’ [Papa, please give water]. That is the last I heard from them around 3 a.m.,” he said. Around 7 a.m. on July 24, when Yadav woke up, Mangal was gone and his wife also had no clue where he went. The previous day, he had told Yadav that he will go to ‘Company Bagh’ to look for work.
“When I tried to wake the girls up, I realised they were dead. I first called a friend of mine and then went to look for Mangal but could not find him. I called the landlord and his wife. My friend suggested that we should take them [children] to the hospital even though they were dead,” he said, adding that he got very scared.
Friends for 25 years
His friendship with Mangal pushed him to stay by the family throughout.
They have been friends for the last 25 years and felt connected because both of them were allegedly “ill-treated by their stepmother and beaten by their father”.
“We bonded over shared pain,” he said.
A silver lining
Meanwhile, after the incident, the residents of Mandawali near Talab Chowk are happy that their grievances are being addressed. “Officials came and asked us to submit documents for issuance of ration card. Those of us who had, have applied,” said Sunita (40).
The anganwadi workers, the locals said, have also become more active. They visit the houses more often to share information on children and general awareness.
Sharing poetic verses on occasions through the conversation coming from his experiences in life, Yadav concluded, “I am so heartbroken that I am never going to help anyone again. I will give them money but nothing more.”
On August 15, he performed a puja as part of the last rites for the three deceased — Mansi (8), Shikha (4), and Parul (2) — and prayed for their souls to rest in peace.
