New Delhi: Two children sit night and day outside a Rohtak court in Haryana waiting for their father to walk free. Nitisha is just eight, her brother Himanshu even younger.
Their mother, say their grandparents, was gangraped, but the rapists got away scotfree. Both their parents consumed poison. The mother died, the father survived and was arrested on the charge of murder. The two children have been living outside the court gates for the past month, awaiting justice for their father and meanwhile, studying on the pavement and crying themselves to sleep.
Asked what they are here for, Nishita says: "To get my father". Their father Sunil Singh was arrested a month ago, accused of killing his wife, Alka. But the Singh family tells a different tale.
Sitting alongside the children, their grandparents hold up photographs of Sunil and Alka.They say Alka was gang raped in 2006 by five men in Sonepat. Despite the family's efforts, the rapists were never brought to book. Instead, Sunil and Alka were pressurised to withdraw the case. Three years later, protesting against the injustice, the couple consumed poison outside the Inspector General's office, they say.
Alka died, Sunil survived. And now, the family claims, Sunil is being framed by the same police that didn't take action against the rapists.
The children's grandfather Roop Singh says: "We have appealed to the chief minister and are hoping..."
But Anil Kumar Rao, Superintendent of Police, Rohtak, says: ''The medical report found no poison in Sunil's body. It appears Sunil made sure that Alka consumed the poison, in order to kill her.''
In Rohtak, this Sonepat family has little money or food and the grandmother Savitri Devi says: "It is very hot outside and the children are always crying for their father." The children are, however, determined to stay here and save their father.