THE OTHER SIDE OF CRIME- 5

THE OTHER SIDE OF CRIME- 5

In this hell on earth, I live.

Every coin has got two sides. 

The stories the convicted female prisoners told about the reasons and causes for committing the crimes, their experiences in prison, the lessons learnt, their hopes and expectations- form the crux of these articles.

I am sharing the stories they told me in first person. It is just their version of the crime, their side of the story. May be they are true, may be false. I leave it to the readers to decide. 

Happy reading!

I am the first woman in the state to be sentenced for death penalty. May be the last too, because I don’t think any other woman on earth is capable of doing the same type of cruelty that I did.

I have studied post graduation in history. As part of my studies, I visited a jail with my friends once during college days. Seeing those people inside the dark cells living with frozen minds, I remember feeling a mixed emotion of sympathy and sarcasm. I had a lot of friends, I was close to a lot of boys in my prime, but I never felt love towards any of them even in the height of youth. My parents were both government servants and reared me up in a strict manner, instructing from my childhood that physical closeness with the opposite sex is a big sin. I am the only girl among the four children my parents had.

Sadly my parents found a groom for me who was not at all a match for me. He was over twelve years older than me but very rich. My father thought I would have a good married life with him. I stood in utter shock at the sight of the man who came to ‘see’ me, his bulging tummy, receding hair line and grey tinged mustache! After the wedding, a further devastation was waiting for me. I found that this was his second marriage! From that moment onward I started hating my parents and brothers intensely. I decided to live my life the way I wanted, without heeding to anything or anybody.

My husband loved me a lot. He never hesitated to take me wherever I wanted to go, buy whatever I wished to possess. Big, palatial house, car and driver to take me everywhere, servants to do all my bidding… I had everything. So, I found satisfaction in all that. Within two years, I became the mother of a most beautiful baby girl. A few years passed off like that. My husband had several business concerns and traveled a lot. When my daughter started play school, I got quite bored sitting at home doing nothing. So one day I asked my hubby, “May I manage that textile shop in town? I have passed post graduation, I think I can do some work to help you. We can save the salary of the manager there too.” He did not like my request. “If you are bored, do something that you enjoy. Join some course, study something new like driving, dress making or something. Or join a club.” He suggested. The textile shop was not a fit place for the owner’s wife to work, he added.

After I kept on my stubborn request to allow me to work somewhere, he resented at last. He allowed me to manage the new pharmacy which was opened very near our house. “Just manage the accounts there. The rule is that only those who have the required pharmaceutical qualifications should be posted in medical shops. So don’t sell any medicines to anyone.” He advised. Every day in the morning, I would dress up beautifully in sari and jewellery and go to the pharmacy to work. I felt very happy. I enjoyed the respect that the sales boys showed me. I was happy to see some people and happier to use all those expensive dresses and trinkets I had. There was an army camp very near the shop, so a lot of good looking guys in uniform used to come to the shop for medicines. One among them was a well behaved guy who always smiled at me and called me madam. He was a nurse at the military hospital. I was ignorant enough to think that he was coming to my shop not just for medicines, since as a hospital staff in the armed forces; he had free access to every medicine within the camp itself!

Anyways, he used to buy plenty of medicines from the shop saying that they are needed for the military clinic. Slowly our friendship developed into love. I knew I was falling into a desperate emotional bondage. But I did not care about the consequences much. I just wanted to be happy in the new feeling of love for a man which I never felt before. I was aware that there are plenty of traps set by men to snare hapless women. But love, when it enslaves you, is truly blind. I found only good qualities in that boy. I fell head down into the warm whirlpool of love and immensely enjoyed bathing in its swirls of waves. My lover was married and had two children, but that did not bother me. All my common sense had been swept away by the tides of that vast ocean called passion.

We tried to keep our affair a secret. This is not serious stuff, it is just for fun, I convinced myself.  We vowed not to create any problems in our family. But as we met more often, things became more intense. There came a stage when he could not stay away from me nor I from him. “Let us get rid of our spouses. Let us get married and live together as husband and wife. Without fearing any one. You get divorce from that old man.” He started to tell me frequently. I knew that I could not divorce my husband or stay away from my daughter. Or any of the comforts that I was so used to. My lover is just a male nurse. He will not be able to afford all these luxuries. I will not be able to stay at a military quarters with him. And he was younger than me. I loved him, needed him physically. But I wasn’t willing to marry him.

Once I firmly expressed my reluctance to divorce, he started to play a different tune. “If he dies due to some illness, will you marry me?” He asked.

“What illness? He is quite healthy.” I replied. I convinced myself that as time went by, I would lose interest in this lover of mine.

“There are medicines for that, you know? Medicines can cure a person of illness, similarly cause illness too.” He whispered.

“No, no. Don’t say such things.” I got scared.

We fought and he stayed away from me for a few days. In the beginning, it was okay for me, I managed the separation. I thought he would come back to me. But as a week went by without him contacting me, I panicked. I suffered acute depression. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I had no peace. My chest hurt a lot. I was at the end of my wits. I decided to see him again. I have only one life. I need him in this life, I thought.

“Do whatever you want. I need you in my life.” I told him that night.

He gave me a tablet to put in my husband’s bed time milk. That night I opened the front door of the house for him.

“He is just sleeping now. If this has to look like a cardiac death, I need to give him an injection.” He said as he pulled out a filled up syringe from his pocket. But the moment the needle entered into my husband’s vein, he woke up. There ensued a fight as I slipped out of the room and closed the door. After sometime, my lover called me inside. I stood aghast. My husband lay dead on the bed, but he had plenty of injuries on his face and body. No one would now believe it to be a natural death!

I started to panic. “Don’t worry, I will handle this. Get me a sharp knife, some cloths and a big sack.” He instructed.

What happened next was something that curdled my blood. I saw him lay down my husband’s body in a tarpaulin sheet in the bathroom and cut him to pieces. He then packed up his parts in plastic sacks. As he was slamming the severed head into an already stuffed sack, we heard a noise at the bathroom door. To my dismay, I saw my five year old daughter who was sleeping in the adjacent room at the bathroom door, watching everything!

I gathered her in my blood stained arms, but she ran off from me. That moment I knew that things will be turning against me. My lover left the house with the sacks containing my husband’s sliced up body and I was left to clean the house. As I cleaned up the bathroom and the knives, I felt deep hatred and fear for that nurse well up within me.

In the police inquiry, I told them everything. My daughter gave correct statement to the police. I felt proud of her, she is such a sweet little girl! I was convicted with death after trail in the court. I know I totally deserve to be hanged at the gallows; I had committed an unspeakable crime. But my brothers filed an appeal in the high court which reduced my sentence to life imprisonment taking sympathy in the fact that I am a woman and I only abetted the murder. That murderer who was once my lover, he did not get any relief from his death sentence even at the apex court. It has been twelve years now in this jail. I get out on paroles. My daughter takes me to that old big house whenever I get paroles. She is now attending entrance coaching classes. She wants to become a doctor.

I have a plea for my fellow sisters in the society. Please do not allow any crimes such as these to be committed in the name of love. Whatever be the punishment that the law gives you, a fire which cannot be doused by anything will keep burning within you. You will be condemned to the fires of hell within yourself forever and ever.