New Delhi: Three children orphaned after a Mercedes, driven by a politician's son, relentlessly drove into a taxi in which their mother was travelling. Five children cheated of a father after a hit and run. These are the grotesqueries that confront Delhi. It's as if the city is determined to prove relentlessly that here, irresponsible driving intersects with poor enforcement of laws to result in casualty after casualty.
At the age of four, and in the space of a week, Preeti has involuntarily become the head of her family. For four days, she waited along with her younger siblings at home for their mother to return. They were alone. They had no food or water. Their 28-year-old mother, Meenakshi, was in a taxi that was battered, last Wednesday, by a Mercedes driven by Dinesh Tanwar. His father, Congressman Kanwar Singh Tanwar, was officially the richest candidate in the last assembly elections in Delhi.
Till Sunday, Meenakshi lay in a morgue, unidentified. Her children waited at home for her to return. None of the neighbours came to help them. They were used to living alone and kept calling their mother on her phone but it was smashed in the accident.
That she would never come back was broken to them by a dispassionate stranger. On the phone.
"I last saw her 8 days ago. I kept calling my mother's phone... finally one policeman picked up, and I found out my mom had died," says Preeti.
Along with her siblings, she is now at a child care centre run by the government. The only hope they cling to: That a distant uncle will collect them and let them live with him.
Across the city, in a small home in West Delhi, five young daughters look at Binita in weary silence. They are hungry. But the bread-winner of this family was killed 10 days ago. Binita's husband was driving the auto when a colonel's wife, allegedly drunk, hit the three-wheeler.
Grief and fear compete for her attention. This is a family whose future is on the brink of collapse. "I need money for their education, marriages," says Binita. "I am uneducated, I can't do a job. He was my only support."
Both Dinesh Tanwar and the Army officer's wife Nivedita Singh have been granted bail. If they are found guilty, they face a maximum of two years in prison for the lives they took.
Binita cannot comprehend how the Army officer's wife has not bothered to visit her or inquire about her young children.
"The law is for the rich. Poor people suffer," she says. Her young daughter, Ruby, is too young to accept that like so many others, her family will soon merge with so many others who reside in statistics of Delhi's unconscionable driving. "It is not allowed to drive drunk. My father was on the right side, she wasn't. Somebody's life can't be followed by such inadequate punishment. It's not fair."