By Rohit Shivhare & Kashif Kakvi
Sagar/Bhopal: On 26 May 2024, a 20-year-old arts student Anjana Ahirwar came out of the mortuary of the Bundelkhand Medical College into the punishing afternoon heat and quietly sat inside an ambulance.
She was taking her uncle’s body home to Barodia Naunagir village, in the eastern Madhya Pradesh district of Sagar, 150 km northeast of Bhopal, to perform the last rites.
Rajendra’s parents, Ramsevak Ahirwar, 60, and mother Choti Bahu, 52, sat next to the body inside the vehicle when the ambulance left the hospital.
A day earlier, men from a higher caste beat and stuck knives into her 24-year-old uncle, a daily-wage labourer, Rajendra Ahirwar, according to a police first information report (FIR) filed hours after the murderous attack.
Rajendra died of a ‘multiple organ failure’, according to the autopsy report. He was the prime witness in the August 2023 murder of his 18-year-old nephew Nitin Ahirwar, Anjana’s younger brother. Thirteen people were accused in the case, five of them were Muslims and rest were from the Dangi Thakur (other backward caste community).
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here.