- They had been physically abused by parents/relatives
- Priyanka claimed she was repeatedly beaten up by her brother Gaurav
- Anju too drew attention to the repeated sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of her stepfather and half-brother
- When Priyanka went to stay at her friend's house, Anju's stepfather and half-brother raped her too
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It wasn't her: Priyanka'a aunt and uncle at her house
It was at this point that Priyanka moved to her friend Anju's home in Amroha. Only to find that the nightmare she had tried to leave behind in Meerut had followed her all the 75-odd km to Amroha. Mutual empathy is perhaps what had brought the two girls together in the first place—Anju too was a victim of sexual abuse by her stepfather and half-brother. When Priyanka accompanied her friend home, the duo allegedly raped her as well. She was, in fact, subjected to the same abuse that Anju is said to have suffered for years. Disheartened, the two complained to the National Commission for Women. An official there has confirmed the receipt of such a letter and duly says that the matter is being looked into.
Things, however, came to a head when Priyanka returned to her home in Meerut's Prayag Colony on the night of November 10, on the pretext of collecting her school-leaving certificates, and asked her mother for money. When refused (and verbally abused, according to the police), Priyanka knocked her mother down in a fit of rage and allegedly strangled her with a curtain. Hearing the commotion, Priyanka's father rushed to the room. At which point, both his daughter and her friend stabbed him with a kitchen knife.
Living in a one-room apartment on the outskirts of the city's Transport Colony since, Priyanka and Anju were picked up by the police a week after the crime. The latter, thankfully, took a sympathetic view of the situation and acceded to the girls' request to present their side of the story to the media. Hence the televised press conference. The girls have retracted their statement since and applied for bail but the police believe there's truth in their story. Says Rakesh Jolly, SP, Meerut City, "The murder does not appear to be premeditated. It was done in a fit of rage."
Not everyone seems to think so, though. "They must have done it for the money," some say. "We hear of boys murdering their parents, but educated girls committing murder is unheard of even here." Indeed, some jewellery, fixed deposit receipts and her father's will were recovered from Priyanka. But, as Jolly says, "the girls were not exactly trying to flee after committing the murder. They were living in a dingy one-room tenement and were in distress. And though we confiscated some cash and the wills, the act appears to be the result of some deep-rooted resentment coming to the fore suddenly."
It was that "other girl", says Priyanka's aunt Prabha Devi, "who must have influenced her to kill her own flesh and blood." Priyanka's relatives maintain she was a bright, cheerful and easygoing girl, "incapable of hurting her own parents who doted on her". Her brother too apparently was fond of her and paid her college fee. "Check with the neighbours," exhorts her aunt, "they loved our beautiful daughter." Priyanka, says her family, was a normal girl till she met Anju in Delhi. The latter, they say, was a small-town girl with wayward ways and a chequered past. Roommates at the South Delhi Polytechnic, Priyanka's friendship with her changed everything, allege her relatives. Some of them even say Priyanka got married to Anju's brother Ajinder, but the police are yet to confirm this.
Teachers at the South Delhi Polytechnic describe Priyanka and Anju as average students who kept to themselves. They did not notice anything amiss in their prolonged absenteeism. Even when the girls stopped coming to college altogether from March this year, the lecturers made no effort to make enquiries.
However, even if no one noticed them in college, Priyanka and Anju have certainly managed to attract enough attention by now with their television appearance. They are now denying they committed the crime, but somewhere deep inside the scars are still hurting. By killing her parents, has Priyanka shut the door on one unpleasant chapter of her life only to open up another?
