The family of Bhanwari Devi is still waiting to cremate her mortal remains, six years after the trained government mid-wife was killed in 2011.
“My sister, like any other Hindu, deserves that her last rites be performed as per the rituals,” Bhanwari Devi’s brother Kailash Nat said Wednesday.
Kailash said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) should hand over the mortal remains so that it could be cremated as per Hindu rituals.
This comes five days after Indra Bishnoi, the prime accused and a co-conspirator in the abduction and murder of Bhanwari Devi, was arrested by the Rajasthan ATS from Devas district in Madhya Pradesh. The mid-wife was killed while trying to escape from the clutches of her kidnappers on September 1, 201. The body was later set on fire. The accused had then collected her mortal remains, including bones, crushed them with a baseball bat before throwing them into Rajiv Gandhi link canal near Jodhpur.
The CBI had recovered the remains, including fragments of teeth and skull. After two top forensic laboratories, based in Delhi and Hyderabad, told the agency that the technology to test “excessively damaged samples” was not available in the country, the CBI sent the fragments to the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI had confirmed that the bone fragments belonged to Bhanwari Devi.
“Earlier when I asked the CBI, I was told that they had sent the remains for forensic investigation and will give them to me once they are back,” Kailash said talking to HT at his residence in Kishangarh town. “Almost six years have passed. The mortal last remains of my sister are still lying in CBI custody,” he added.
Kailash said that though there were “some problems because of complex nature of the case” but now that “Indra Bishnoi, who is the mastermind behind kidnapping and killing my sister” has been arrested, almost “all glitches in the case” are over. The murder case had rocked Rajasthan politics as then PHED minister Mahipal Maderna and Congress MLA Malkhan Singh Bishnoi were named as accused. Bhanwari Devi allegedly had sexual relations with both Maderna and Malkhan and had been blackmailing them for money. Malkhan is Indra’s brother. Another of their siblings Paras Ram is also an accused in the case.
